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Description: | Sir Anthony van Dyck was the leading portrait painter of his day and his work exerted a lasting influence on portraiture both in the Netherlands and England. Highly precocious, he was admitted to the Antwerp Guild of Painters in 1618 and soon after he entered the studio of Rubens where he remained for two years before travelling to Italy in 1621. Here he was based at Genoa but travelled extensively. His paintings of the Genoese aristocracy are the outstanding testament to the new kind of proud, flattering portrait image van Dyck created of the nobility. As a result of these pictures his reputation spread throughout Europe. In 1627 van Dyck returned to his native Antwerp where he remained until 1632 when he was called to England, to be court painter to Charles I. Here he was predominantly occupied as a portrait painter. The two van Dyck portraits in Southampton were probably painted in Antwerp shortly before the artist's departure for Italy. They have been dated to 1619-20. They fully reveal the individuality of van Dyck's accomplished style. Dressed in sober clothes the elongated figure of A Man is set off against a red curtain, while his pale and elegant slender hands, painted in van Dyck's famous hallmark' manner are set-off against the background of his fashionable dark outfit. In the Portrait of a Woman, possibly his wife, the sitter is shown seated and dressed in her finest clothes of the latest fashion embroidered with lace and jewels indicating her wealthy status. The sitters remain unidentified. However, they were evidently members of Antwerp's most prosperous class. | Subjects: | portrait | Source: | Vads | Creator: | Artist: Dyck, Anthony van (Flemish painter, 1599-1641, active in England) Æ | Identifier: | http://www.vads.ac.uk/large.php?uid=8405... | Go to resource |
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