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Arts
A suitable case for treatment
John McEwen
Everyone has heard of Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641), but his portraits, which are all we know him for, are still so tied to specific families and houses that his painting has remained largely unfocused by scholarly attention and exhibition. He is, therefore, a particularly suitable case for the exhibition and lavish book to which he and his work have now been treated: Van Dyck in England, selected and catalogued by Sir Oliver Millar (National Portrait Gallery till 20 March 1983) and Van Dyck by Christopher Brown (Phaidon pp. 240, 230 ill. [37 col.], £25).
As Rubens's most promising pupil, Van Dyck had already made a European name for himself by the age of 21, when he was first tempted to England by the Earl of Arundel. But, although almost immediately securing the patronage of James I, he soon left for Italy — bowled over by the sight of Arundel's `Titians' and `Veroneses' — and was not persuaded to return till ten years later. He then painted out the remainder of his life in London; marrying a grand- daughter of the 1st Earl of Gowrie, dying on the verge of the Civil War and being buried (despite his Roman Catholicism) in St Paul's, close by the tomb of John of Gaunt.
Van Dyck in England, therefore, is no empty title. Half his working life was spent on the Continent, much of it devoted to painting the grand religious subjects that his commitment to portraiture in England was to exclude; increasingly, it would seem, to his regret. Standing in front of the `Crucifixion' at Mechelen, Reynolds thought it 'one of the first pictures in the world, and it gives the highest idea of Van Dyck's powers; it shows that he had truly a genius for history-painting, if he had not been taken off by portraits'. Van Dyck's total achievement remains to be judged.
Inaugurating a warren of a space at the NPG we are confronted, in appropriately Caroline restriction, with a crowd of these portraits. Repetition in the end becomes a little dull. The commanding stance, the background of noble column and luxuriant drape, the biographical landscape glimpse — the formula is in itself a question of man- ners and protocol. The presence of royalty
— even in the form of that uxorious pair, Charles I and Henrietta Maria — imposes a certain pedantry on Van Dyck that prevents him becoming his own man in the way of the greatest of his precursors and contem- poraries. He is no Titian or Caravaggio (still on hand at the Royal Academy for comparison) or Rubens or Velasquez or Rembrandt, but he is still, as Gainsborough reiterated on his deathbed, one of the ar- tistic elect. His absolute mastery ofte41,,, nique banished the icon-like stiffness frevc English portraiture at a stroke; and ,1141 brought with him the continental belief t .11'"o a portrait, as much as any subject, 50'1'3 be a work of imagination and not .illstcs documentary matter of catching a Itkaa,,ea-h, This is his great legacy to Gainsborough but he influences the grand portrait sOto right through to Sargent (not just Jl Lawrence, as Brown suggests), who, f°151 his vulgar lack of self-effacement, 01" stand as the last Van Dyckian. Stylistically, Van Dyck, is tne - , n1051 unsexy, the most unintimate paintere 011er aginable. He displays no discourtesy, itplin. to the conventions of the genre or the s'in. sibilities of his sitters, disguising, f°1.,s stance, the prominence of the (211e":111 teeth, which were described as sticking :it, from between her lips like guns from a laidd And yet, protected by the genre, fleca-ao take daring liberties, getting away wIt'hhet ecstatic nude of his mistress by calling he Psyche and making haughty cavaliers tt5 vehicles for dazzling feats of colour. Pio the main fault of the exhibition that DY baks, dozen of these most stunning `Van ole are missing. As with Gainsborough a ca.ni of years ago, we are deprived of too 01.`" roc. of the plums in the cake. Dr HaYes, Vidiat for of the NPG, was the guilty party nn ',,n. occasion, showing himself to be an "at doubted roundhead. Sir Oliver lintlia,rho least protests that he tried to do better ivoil he has, but did he try hard enough? he Dyck was a cavalier, and accordinglYor, would be best served by one as a selecto What you have missed — the 1-01.1`',.ait `Charles I', the Westminsters"Self-Porrge with a Sunflower', the Spencers '6°0 Digby, 2nd Earl of Bristol, and Willican Russell 1st Duke of Bedford' etc d. be gleaned from Christopher Browns la tve mark of a book, the first comPreberlds in study for 80 years to be Publishe- England. Factual stodge is nicely lubricates. with well-chosen quotes and aneeclarop Van Dyck is shown to have been One, 3 the himself and very much esteemed `11 but Court, not just by the King and Queerlibe theatricals apotentates,tric als of the e too, Caroline, k e Court euwrt k ca were elo stle• ear, ly more to his taste than was the bar the Court of James I. One is reminded 01,,„d French Court before the Revolution, how a similar taste for theatricals tint"ies ished; irresistibly, too, the ringleted 'Si': of faces raise more amusing comParis° Harold Wilson as some welfare state.ver incarnation of Charles II. Charles I 1:61, paid Van Dyck the half of what he °miles but a sense of divine innocence e`' across nonetheless. The Court was out-of- date, but, thanks to Van Dck, we can see What a sunset it made. y I Also at the NPG (till 23 January) are the tobacco few singled out for the third Imperial Portrait Award; 52 portraits by „.Y°. Wig British painters are on view, the winher Humphrey Ocean, receiving a cash aNward ,,,., of £6,000 and a commission from the fork-IL for £1,000 to paint a well-known sitter r tue museum's permanent collection . This Year the • in exhibition has succeeded in bring. - Gg to light a painter of real promise in d avih Jones, who wins a 'Special Commen- 2tion' for his Painting of a cadaver in the meticulous style of early Lucian Freud.
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