productions. The group of three English royal children in the
gallery at Turin (1635), the portraits of Charles I. in the Louvre and in the National Gallery, London, the picture of the Pembroke family at Wilton House, Sir George and Sir Francis Villiers, and the earls of Bristol and Bedford, at Althorp, as well as those of Francis Russell, fourth earl of Bedford, and Anne Carr, his consort, at Woburn Abbey (1636), all belong to the years immediately following the master’s return from the Netherlands.
He now married Lady Mary Ruthven, daughter of Sir Patrick Ruthven and granddaughter of the earl of Gowrie. There are several portraits of her by her husband, the most important being in the Munich gallery, in which she is represented in white satin, playing on the violoncello. She is also said to figure as the Virgin in a picture belonging to Lord Lyttelton. There is a capital engraving of her by Bolswert. In another picture, said to be Mary Ruthven, an exceedingly handsome lady is represented as “Herminia Putting on Clarinda’s Armour.” There can be no doubt as to the model having been Margaret Lemon, a celebrated beauty, whose portrait was engraved by W. Hollar and J. Morin and painted by Van Dyck at Hampton Court. “She was,” says Mr Ernest Law, in his excellent catalogue of this gallery, “the most beautiful and celebrated, though far from being the only mistress of Van Dyck. The great artist, in fact, loved beauty in every form, and found the seduction of female charms altogether irresistible. She lived with him at his house at Blackfriars.” The precise date of Van Dyck’s marriage has not been ascertained. It was probably towards the end of 1639. The union is said to have been promoted by the artist’s friends in order to save him from the consequence of his pernicious way of living. Margaret Lemon resented the event most cruelly, and tried to maim Van Dyck’s right hand.
Van Dyck found few occasions in England to paint anything but portraits. There exists at Belvoir Castle a sketch by him representing a procession of the knights of the Garter, a really grandiose composition, engraved by Cooper. We know from Bellori that Van Dyck had suggested, through his friend Sir Kenelm Digby, for the banqueting-room at Whitehall, a series of decorations illustrating the history of the order of the Garter, and that the king had been much pleased with the idea. The plan, however, failed through the excessively high price asked by the painter, and perhaps also because the king had thought of having the work done in tapestry. Van Dyck’s pension was five years in arrear, and, instead of £560, he received finally, besides his pension, only £200.
When the news of Rubens’s death reached London (June 1640) Van Dyck contemplated a return to his native country, and a letter from Ferdinand of Austria to Philip IV. speaks of his intended journey to Antwerp on St Luke’s Day (18th October). Rubens had left unfinished a series of paintings commanded by the king of Spain, and from correspondence published by Professor Justi we learn that Van Dyck had been thought of to give them the finishing touch. But he absolutely refused to finish them. It was then agreed that he should paint an independent canvas destined to complete the series. Van Dyck was delighted with this order, and Ferdinand tells his brother that he returned to London in great haste “to make preparations for his change of residence; possibly,” adds the letter, “he may still change his mind, for he is stark mad.” Whether Van Dyck found it possible to work during his short stay in the Netherlands is a matter of doubt. Most authors suppose that Van Dyck’s principal object in travelling to the continent was to be entrusted with the decoration of one of the galleries of the Louvre. There may be some truth in this, for Mariette speaks of a letter he saw, written by Claude Vignon, the French painter, in January 1641, asking Langlois for an introduction to Van Dyck, who was then in Paris. Unfortunately the great painter was thwarted in his aspirations. His health was beginning to fail. After his return to London he was frequently obliged to interrupt his work; and a letter written (13th August) from Richmond by Lady Anne Roxburgh to Baron W; van Brederode at the Hague states that the portraits of the Princess Mary had been greatly delayed through Van Dyck’s illness, and that the prince’s (William II. of Orange) would be ready in eight days. “As Van Dyck intends leaving England in the course of ten or twelve days at latest,” she adds, “he will take the paintings himself to the princess of Orange.” These portraits, now in the museum at Amsterdam, are the last Van Dyck painted in England. Of works dated 1639 the portrait of Lady Pembroke, in the gallery of Darmstadt, is a fine example; and to the same year belongs a full-length portrait of Arthur Goodwin at Chatsworth. The twin portrait of Thomas Carew and Thomas Killigrew, in the royal collection, dated 1638, is certainly most delicate, but very weak in tone and slight in handling. Van Dyck sailed in September, and probably spent some time with his Antwerp friends. Early in November he reached Paris, and succeeded in obtaining some important work, when, on 16th November, he was compelled to resign his commissions on account of the state of his health. Scarcely three weeks later (9th December 1641) he died at his residence at Blackfriars. Van Dyck was buried in old St Paul’s, where a Latin inscription was placed on his tomb by Charles I.
An elegy in Cowley’s Miscellanies speaks, not only of the painter’s talent, but of his amiable disposition. We may perhaps point to the coincidence that a Mrs Cowley is in Van Dyck’s will (of 1st December) named guardian of his child, Justiniana Anna, born only eight days before her father’s death. The painter had in the Netherlands an illegitimate daughter, Maria Theresia, who was entrusted to his sister, and to whom he bequeathed £4000. The name of her mother is not known. Not long after her husband’s death Lady Van Dyck became the second wife of Sir Richard Pryse of Gogerddan in Cardiganshire. She was dead in 1645. Justiniana Van Dyck, who was married when scarcely twelve years old to Sir John Stepney of Prendergast, was also something of an artist: she painted a “Crucifixion,” with four angels receiving Christ’s blood in chalices. A similar subject had been painted by Van Dyck, as Bellori tells us, for the duke of Northumberland. After the Restoration a pension of £200 for life was granted to Justiniana Van Dyck, who died before 1690.
Properly speaking, Van Dyck cannot be said to have formed a school. He was followed to London by some of his earlier collaborators, and there soon met a considerable number of others. Jaa van Reyn, David Beek, Adrian Hanneman, Mathew Merian, John Bockhorst (Lang Jan), Remy van Leemput and Peter Thys were foremost among foreigners, Henry Stone and William Dobson among Englishmen. To their assistance the master owed much; but they are also responsible for the vast number of constantly recurring copies which go by his name. It often requires a very discriminating eye to distinguish some of these copies from the original paintings. Nevertheless, after Van Dyck’s death many of his coadjutors produced works of undeniable merit. No school more strikingly reflects the influence of Van Dyck than the British school. Stone and Dobson were, properly speaking, the most fortunate of his continuators; and there is little doubt that such masters as Reynolds, Gainsborough, Lawrence and Raeburn owe a large measure of their superiority to their study of his works.
Though Van Dyck’s reputation greatly suffered through the numerous copies he allowed his pupils to take from his works, the case is otherwise with engraving: Vorsterman, Pontius, Peter de Jode, P. Balliu and S. Bolswert were seldom more fortunate than when under his guidance. De Jode’s “St Augustine,” Bolswert’s “Ecce Homo” and “Crucifixion,” Vorsterman’s “Deposition,” and especially Pontius’s “Herman Joseph” rank among the masterpieces of the art of engraving. Van Dyck was himself an incomparable etcher, and with the needle arrived at a degree of excellence scarcely inferior to that exhibited in his paintings. Such prints as the portraits of Vorsterman, John de Wael, Snyders, Josse de Momper, Adam van Noort, and above all his own effigy, bear witness to his prodigious knowledge of design. Print collectors pay extravagant prices For a first proof taken from the plates engraved by Van Dyck himself. Van Dyck also employed some of the best engravers of his time for the production of a gallery of illustrious heads, men and women, of different countries. Whether all were taken from life is questionable. Gustavus Adolphus and Wallenstein he can hardly nave met. Du Breucq, the architect, he never knew. But all the sketches and drawings were done by himself, and are often met with in public and private galleries. The engravings are sometimes very beautiful and in their first states very rare. Published successively by Martin van der Enden, Giles Hendrickx and John Meyssens, the collection originally consisted of sixteen warriors and statesmen, twelve scholars and fifty-two artists. Hendrickx raised the number to ninety-nine, and used as a frontispiece the