A PAINTER'S PROGRESS, Sir Anth. ny. Van Dyck.

Otago Witness, Issue 2201, 7 May 1896, Page 52

A PAINTER'S PROGRESS, Sir Anth. ny. Van Dyck.

Van Dyck was born at Antwerp in 1599. He came of honest and' devout burgher folk, who were not wanting in refinement and' in. culture. He had 1 his. first lessons, in art, and especially, in taste, from bis mother, .who, after the faßtiion of her time, embroidered compositions for the home, and wfio gave, the painter- fine delicacy and- distinction which form his essential' charm. In due coarse he was apprenticed' to a painter, and after serving his time he gradually found bis way to the studio of Rubens. This was the turning point of. his life. Rubens struck the balance between the new Italian theories of the. ideal In art and the older Italian and early Flemish naturalism, as it is seen in the masterpieces of the fifteenth century. The new society wanted something, new, and Rubens gavo it to them in a splendid compromize. Van Dyck was PBOBABLY ONE OP HIS, MASTEK'S " GHOSTS," if ghosts they are to be called, when they came cut so honestly into the daylight, and laid in the work for their employer like any other journeymen. The studio of the earlier painter was organised very much like the mere workshop of industry. The master never pretended to be the author of every stroke. He designed, . supervised, and gave finishing touches. Art, In. fact, was primarily an industry — even, as we have, seen, in its apprenticeships. The system survived in paintirjg almost to our century. It was still flourishing in the time of Reynolds, and it was the only thing that rendered the immense output of the earlier, painters possible.

The studio of Rubens was also a gallery of art, rich with the spoils of Italy, collected as" a museum of examples for technical use. Van, Djck, of course, made the Italian tour. He then returned to Flanders, and FIBALLy HE GAME TO ENGLANB, where he lived all the rest of his active life. He was brought here at the instance of Lord Arundel, and the negotiations for bis transfer were conducted with all the gravity of an affair of State. He entered into communication with Charles's Ministers. He chaffered over the bargain; sometimes threatened to break off in ill-humour, and' was won at last with as much difficulty as a rojal bride, or * slice of foreign territory. This golden age of artists, if not of ait, will" probably never come again. Times are changed. Painters have learned to do without courts, and courts without paintere.

I Charles, as a gieat prince, could not dispense I with them. They were a part of- his state. Van Dyck's long stay in- England wa3 as beneficial to us a« it was profitable to him. It has madeens THE RI CHEST OfttTNTBY IN THE WOULD In examples of this master. ' The Windsor Gallery is not the only one in which he 1b seen in some of his finest examples. Others aw only inferior to it. He found his true vooation here as a painter of portraits, and he 1 was- fortunate in his sitters. It was an age of superb costume and of magnificent pageantry ; and, if he had come as much later as Koeller, he would have missed a good deal of both. His »»irreis were an aristocracy who had an unbroken tradition of. opulence, splendour, and the power of taking themselves seriously. The great Civil War broke the link with the past, and produced a breed of mete courtiers who had. lost the perfect inheritance. Van Dyck's portraits, like those, of Velasquez, are tbe portraits- of persons who have never learned to doubt their own uses, and whose ineffable serenity has THE OHABM OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS. In 1634 he returned to the 1 Netherlands, and- soon after his life came to an end. His outgnt was prodigious, and' it never conld have been the .unaided work of one man. His. strength, and his weakness lay in a certain want of originality.. He was always more or less under the influence of other powerful- persoualitiea in art— -Srst- of the* .great Italian colourists, then of Rubens. He attained his supreme, good fortnne when he became portrait painter to one of the greatest courts in Europe. There the grace and distinction which were his own essential qualities had free play, and he was not obliged to a waste himself on inadequate -efforts- in the sacred art fbr which he was unfitted, \ His religioaftcomposltions are wholly wanting in. devotional feeling, and nothing can j oompensateior their essential triviality. They . were, in his eyes, HERB COMPOSITIONS, .and he never songht to give them true .character of either type or sentiment. It. took' fully two centuries more to restore to as what we had lost by the reaction against the school that was* before Raphael, as distinct from the pre-Raphaelite school. Van Dyck, like aU." other masters, is only to be nnderstood by reference to the conditions in which bis genius developed. We must compare him with what went before him, And estimate him by bis success in supplying' the artistic want of his time. That want was not fervour, devotion, or intensity. It was simply vigour, and grace. Hi? art was intimately associated with bis nature. . He painted kings extremely well,, because he saw nothing higher than kings. He failed with saints and angels* because he could* not j see them at all— Daily News. |