On Van Dyck's return to Flanders, and on the death of his father, he was able to take Rubens' advice, and in 1623, when Van Dyck was still only twenty-two years of age, he set out for Venice, the Rome of the Flemish painters. Before quitting Antwerp, Van Dyck, in proof of the friendship which existed between the painters, presented Rubens with several of the former's pictures, among them his famous portrait of 'Rubens' wife.' As a pendant to this generosity, when Van Dyck came back to Antwerp, and complained to Rubens that he—Van Dyck—could not live on the profits of his painting, Rubens went next day and bought every picture of Van Dyck's which was for sale.
Van Dyck spent five years in Italy, visiting Venice, Florence, Rome, and Palermo, but residing principally at Genoa. In Italy, he began to indulge in his love of splendid extravagance, and in the fastidious fickleness which belonged to the evil side of his character. At Rome he was called 'the cavalier painter,' yet his first complaint on his return to Antwerp was, that he could not live on the profits of his painting! He avoided the society of his homelier countrymen.
At Palermo, Van Dyck knew, and according to some accounts, painted the portrait of Sophonisba Anguisciola, who claimed to be the most eminent portrait painter among women. She was then about ninety years of age, and blind, but she still delighted in having in her house a kind of academy of painting, to which all the painters visiting Palermo resorted. Van Dyck asserted that he owed more to her conversation than to the teaching of all the schools. A book of his sketches, which was recovered, showed many drawings 'after Sophonisba Anguisciola.' She is said to have been born at Cremona, was invited at the age of twenty-six by Philip II, to Spain, and was presented by him with a Spanish don for a husband, and a pension of a thousand crowns a-year from the customs of Palermo.
The plague drove Van Dyck from Italy back to Flanders, where he painted for a time, and presented his picture of the 'Crucifixion' to the Dominicans as a memorial gift in honour of his father, but in Flanders Rubens' fame overshadowed that of every other painter, and Van Dyck, recalling an invitation which he had received from the Countess of Arundel while still in Italy, came a second time to England, in 1630, when he was about thirty years of age, and lodged again with a fellow-countryman and painter named Gildorp. But his sensitive vanity was wounded by his not at once receiving an introduction to the king, or the countenance which the painter considered his due, and the restlessness, which was a prominent feature in his character, being re-awakened, he withdrew once more from England, and returned to the Low Countries in 1631. At last, a year later, in 1632, Van Dyck's pride was propitiated by receiving a formal invitation from Charles I., through Sir Kenelm Digby, to visit England, and this time the painter had no cause to complain of an unworthy reception. He was lodged by the king among his artists at Blackfriars, having no intercourse with the city, save by water. He had the king, with his wife and children, to sit to him, and was granted a pension of two hundred a-year, with the distinction of being named painter to his Majesty.
A year later Van Dyck was knighted. Royal and noble commissions flowed upon him, and the king, who had a hereditary love of art, visited the painter continually, and spent some of the happiest and most innocent hours of his brief and clouded life in Van Dyck's company. Thus began Van Dyck's success in England, and it rested with himself whether that success was to be real or only apparent, enduring or temporary.
To give you an example of how often, and in how many different manners, Van Dyck painted the king and royal family, I shall quote from a list of his pictures—
'King Charles in coronation robes.'
'King Charles in armour' (twice).
'King Charles in white satin, with his hat on, just
descended from his horse; in the distance, view of the
Isle of Wight.'
'King Charles in armour, on a white horse; Monsieur
de St Antoine, his equerry, holding the king's
helmet.'
'The King and Queen sitting; Prince Charles,
very young, standing at the King's side; the Duke of
York, an infant, on the Queen's knee.'
'The King and Queen holding a crown of laurel
between them.'
'The Queen in white.'
'Prince Charles in armour' (two or three times).
'King, Queen, Prince Charles, and Princess Mary.'
'Queen with her five children.'
'Queen with dwarfs, [44] Sir Geoffrey Hudson having
a monkey on his shoulder.'
Van Dyck had several great patrons, after the king. For the Earl of Arundel, in addition to portraits of the Earl and Countess, the painter designed a second Arundel family picture, which was painted by Fruitiers. For George, Duke of Buckingham, Van Dyck painted one of his finest double portraits of the Duke's two sons, when children. For the Northumberland family Van Dyck painted, besides portraits of Henry and Algernon, Earls of Northumberland, another famous picture, that of the two beautiful sisters, Lady Dorothy Percy, afterwards Countess of Leicester, and her sister, Lady Lucy Percy, afterwards Countess of Carlisle, whose charms figure frequently in the memoirs of her time. William and Philip, Earls of Pembroke, were also among his patrons, and for the second he painted his great family picture, 'The Wilton Family.' Sir Kenelm Digby, too, whose wife Venitia was more frequently painted than any woman of her day, and was not more distinguished for her beauty than for her lack of nobler qualities. Van Dyck alone painted her several times, the last after her sudden death, for her vain and eccentric, if gallant, husband, who in the end was no friend to Van Dyck.
But these high names by no means exhaust the list of patrons of a painter who, among various contradictory qualities, was indefatigably industrious. His work is widely distributed among the Scotch as well as the English descendants of the nobility whom he painted, so that the possession of at least one ancestral 'Van Dyck' accompanies very many patents of nobility, and is equivalent to a warrant of gentle birth.
The Earl of Clarendon, in the next reign, had a great partiality for Van Dyck's pictures, and was said to be courted by gifts of them until his apartments at Cornbury were furnished with full-length 'Van Dycks.' A third of his collection went to Kitty Hyde, Duchess of Queensberry, one of the Earl's three co-heiresses. Through the Rich family many of these 'Van Dycks' passed to Taymouth Castle, where by a coincidence they were lodged in the company of numerous works of George Jamieson of Aberdeen, who is said to have been for a short time a fellow-pupil of Van Dyck's under Rubens, who has been called 'the Scotch Van Dyck,' and who is certainly the first native painter who deserves honourable mention. Since the death of the last Marquis of Breadalbane these travelled 'Van Dycks' have gone back to the English representative of the Rich family.