It is ten years since the last big exhibition of the brilliant 17th-century
Flemish artist Anthony Van Dyck's work in London. Born and trained in
Antwerp, he perfected his trade in Rubens' studio, where his precocious
talent rapidly made him one of the most sought-after painters in Europe.
Having visited England briefly in 1620, he returned in 1632 and was
appointed “principalle Paynter in Ordinary” to the English King and Queen,
with a knighthood and a substantial pension of £200. He died in London in
1641, aged 42.
Van Dyck and Britain, which opens at Tate Britain in February, takes as its
theme the “pictorial influence” of the many dazzling works the Van Dyck
studio produced during his comparatively brief career in England. What, the
curators ask, was his role and lasting influence in defining English
portraiture? How did his virtuosity shape the portrait images of King
Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria to give them an aura of magnificence
they lacked in real life?
But is this justification enough for another exhibition? One answer might be
that ten years on from that remarkable Royal Academy show it is possible to
set Van Dyck's English paintings properly in their European context, so as
to begin to appreciate the part his work played in the international power
politics of his day.
In the past decade there have been dramatic changes in the way British
historians engage with the work of their counterparts on the Continent. On
both sides of the English Channel, social and cultural historians have begun
to pool their evidence and to dismantle systematically the artificial
boundaries between their national cultures. In so doing they have
constructed compelling new narratives of exchange and influence between
hitherto separated nation states.
So I have to confess to being disappointed that British art history has lost a
golden opportunity to enter into a constructive dialogue with these
horizon-expanding new developments. Here was the perfect occasion on which
to introduce the gallery-going public to ground-breaking materials uncovered
by historians of 17th-century Anglo-Dutch affairs, including Jonathan Israel
and Simon Schama.
While the new exhibition's catalogue essays mention the storm clouds of the
impending English Civil War that gather above the sitters, for example,
there is barely a suggestion that this might inform our understanding of the
paintings, or that image-making might have consequences beyond the royal
receiving rooms. Catalogue entries for individual works simply provide a
condensed account of the rank and marital status of the sitters, the
occasion of the portrait, and concentrate on Van Dyck's brilliant execution
and artistic influence.
This apparent absence of interest in a broader social and political context
for 17th-century portraiture is the more disappointing given that this was a
period of dramatic political change and international engagement, in which
practically all the painters at work in England were of Low Countries origin.
Rubens, Lievens, Hanneman, Hont-horst, Mytens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck and Lely
all moved repeatedly between England and mainland Europe, to wherever there
were lucrative commissions.
So what am I looking for that art history is failing to tell us about these
masterly canvases, beguilingly capturing the social ease of high-ranking men
and women, in gorgeous doublets and frocks? Well, for one thing, it was not
simply the artists who knowingly exploited an awareness of shared
Anglo-Dutch political and social aspirations. The traffic in art played a
significant role in carving out political careers for men and women moving
between London and The Hague and London and Antwerp over more than half a
century of upheaval. Paintings were given as gifts by one noble household to
another overseas; they were acquired aspirationally to emulate the taste of
a foreign competitor; they were exchanged by potential allies and exploited
by diplomats deftly negotiating political factions and alliances.
More or less “diplomatic” exchanges of portraits from any artist's studio
eased international relations and facilitated family liaisons. Portraits
were the currency used when women and men bent on improving their precarious
political fortunes brokered their way into prestigious circles in new
locations abroad.
In 1618, for example, Sir Dudley Carleton admired Daniel Mytens's paired
portraits of the Earl of Arundel and his wife (in the National Portrait
Gallery) and tried to purchase them. Mytens sent him copies instead, at the
earl's expense: “I send you by this bearer that picture or portrait of the
Lord of Arundel and his Lady, together in a small format, it is covered up in a small case. I have done my endeavour to persuade his Lordship to send
your honour those great pictures, but he is not willing to part from them,
and he willed me to make these in a smaller form, which I trust your Honour
will accept.”
One aspiring “royal”, Amalia van Solms, wife of the Dutch Stadholder (the
elected ruler of the Dutch Republic), commissioned copies of portraits of
the Stuart royal family from Van Dyck's studio to hang prominently in her
apartments in The Hague. She also ordered at least one entire series of
paintings, based on Van Dyck portraits, which were hung fashionably together
in her receiving rooms.
So painters such as Van Dyck did a lively trade in large and small copies of
paintings of notable sitters, including head-and-shoulders details and
portrait-based miniatures. These were made, speculatively or on demand, by
the artist or a member of his studio, and were sold to those prepared to
pay. As Karen Hearn writes in the exhibition catalogue: “Replicas, not by
the hand of Sir Anthony himself, could be ordered simultaneously - the cost
in this case was £20 for a half-length and £30 for a full-length ...
Moreover, while a portrait was still in Van Dyck's studio a miniaturist
might also make small-scale copies of the head alone. Thus rather than
commissioning a single, unique work of art, a client could be offered a full
range of options (as a portrait photographer would today).”
We may take a single example of the significance of portrait-copying to order,
and its importance as a form of international brokering of personal power
and influence, from one of the paintings in the Tate Britain Van Dyck
exhibition. At the end of last year, Tate Britain announced that a portrait
by Van Dyck of Lady Stanhope, thought lost, would be shown in the exhibition
this year, having reappeared and been sold at auction in New York.
Historians of Anglo-Dutch affairs will immediately recognise this image of
Lady Stanhope. A copy of this unforgettable painting of a young woman in a
stylish hat is one of 12 gilt-framed head-and-shoulders “portraits of
English beauties” acquired by Amalia van Solms in the early 1640s. All 12
“beauties” appear to be derived from portraits Van Dyck painted around
1638-39, among them a number included in the Tate exhibition - Lady
Elizabeth Howard, Dorothy Sidney, the Savage sisters, Dorothy, Viscountess
Andover and Elizabeth, Lady Thimbleby, Lucy Percy and Anne Cecil.
This set of paintings may have been commissioned by Van Solms to enhance her
connection with the English court, or it may have been presented to her as a
gift in 1641 when her 14-year-old son William of Orange married Charles I's
eldest daughter Mary Stuart (then aged 9). Either way, it ensured a warm
welcome for those of the sitters in the paintings who were obliged to decamp
from the British Isles around the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642. One of
these was Lady Stanhope.
In 1641 Lady Stanhope (widowed at 24) married the leading Dutch courtier Jan
van der Kerckhoven, Lord of Heenvliet, who had come to London to negotiate
the marriage of William of Orange and Mary Stuart. The child of this
Anglo-Dutch dynastic liaison, William III, would become king of England in
1689. The Kerckhovens returned to The Hague with the child-bride Mary in
1642 and took charge of her household. A prominent figure at the Dutch court
recounts how, on her arrival, at meals the heavily pregnant Lady Stanhope
refused to be seated with other members of Mary's household and demanded to
be treated as nobility. This redoubtable woman subsequently figured
prominently in the political manoeuvring surrounding Mary Stuart's affairs,
and subsequently the upbringing of her son, William III, born in 1650.
On the day that Charles II arrived back in England at the Restoration in 1660,
he created Lady Stanhope Countess of Chesterfield in her own right, in
recognition of her service to his sister Mary and ten-year-old nephew
William.
For the catalogue to this exhibition to continue to peddle the historical
fiction that Lady Stanhope and Van Dyck had some kind of amorous liaison at
the time her portrait was being painted in the 1630s is to trivialise the
standing of a significant and powerful female “player” on the Anglo-Dutch
historical scene. The supposed “love-affair” between a jobbing painter
and his elite sitter is based on a gossipy letter from one London courtier
to another describing Van Dyck's “gallantry for the love of that lady”. The
painter got his come-uppance, it records, when “he dispu-ted with her about
the price of her picture and sent her word that if she would not give the
price he demanded he would sell it to another that would give more”.
All that these remarks tell us is that Van Dyck found Lady Stanhope
captivating and that she, in turn, was careful with her money. Both her
beauty and her financial prudence were legendary by the time she arrived in
the Dutch Republic. She ended her life having accumulated a huge fortune,
engineered impressive careers for the children of her three marriages and
exercised almost unparalleled influence in the political affairs of the
Dutch Republic and the Orange-Stuart dynasty for 20 years. To claim, as an
early press release for the exhibition does, that Van Dyck “had a personal involvement”
with her, and that the painting on display may have been “a lover's gift”,
is absurd.
I look forward to visiting Van Dyck and Britain at the Tate, to enjoy the
scale and splendour of the paintings. But I fear I will have to be patient
as far as enlarging the gallery-goer's understanding of Anglo-Dutch history
is concerned. Art history's readiness to engage with the international
cultural scenarios which could transform our appreciation of a great
artist's oeuvre apparently still lies some way in the future.
Van Dyck and Britain, Tate Britain, London SW1 (020-7887 8888), Feb 18-May 17.
Lisa Jardine's most recent book, Going Dutch: How England Plundered
Holland's Glory, is published by HarperCollins
