The Frick Collection is justly renowned for its focus exhibitions, which take as their point of departure works in the permanent collection, which are contextualised by a number of choice loans. (Full disclosure: I have participated in five of these exhibitions.) These shows compel visitors to focus on a small number of objects before museum fatigue sets in. They are guided missiles, not blockbusters. In this instance, there are eight portraits by Van Dyck, purchased by Henry Clay Frick, six of which are in the exhibition. By showing us the marvelous preparatory sketches of Anthony van Dyck and the related finished portraits in the exhibition Van Dyck: The Anatomy of Portraiture, the curators Stijn Alsteens and Adam Eaker take us behind the scenes of this theatrical painter and convincingly reconstruct his creative process. The catalogue entries are exemplary. I found only one small error: the credit for the 1999 exhibition Velázquez, Rubens, Van Dyck at the Prado in Madrid, should be given to Jonathan—not Christopher—Brown.
Among the revelations are the artist's preliminary studies, drawn in a wistful style and lacking heads. Van Dyck concentrated his attention on the attire, and left the heads presumably to be completed from life. As Emilie Gordenker has shown us, the garments worn by Van Dyck’s female sitters were signifiers of social status. Their costumes cost several times the amount paid to the artist for the finished portrait. The facial expressions of the full-length female sitters tend to be bland. However, Van Dyck was capable of incisive psychological studies, which come to the fore in the portrait studies of fellow artists, which were executed for a print series known as the Iconografie, a collection of famous men of the time. Especially striking is Orazio Gentileschi, who worked at the English court from 1626 until his death in 1639. He was known to be a prickly character, which was an opinion Van Dyck shared.
Needless to say, the curators are Van Dyck enthusiasts and this posture leads them to overestimate his merits and consequently his place in the history of 17th century portraiture. For example, Alsteens observes that a late work, the Portrait of Francois Langlois (1641), demonstrates that Van Dyck once again offers “proof that he was fully capable of the quality that had propelled his career from his teenage years in Antwerp and that, matured when he had barely reached his twentieth birthday, had soon earned him a reputation as Europe’s greatest portraitist.” Really? Greater than Velázquez? Greater than Rembrandt? Or, for that matter, greater than Rubens?
Inevitably the connection of Van Dyck to his mentor, Peter Paul Rubens, is inherent in any discussion of the younger artist. Two drawings of the same sitter, the Jesuit Nicolas Trigault in Chinese Costume, are placed side-by-side in the exhibition and leave no doubt that Rubens carries the day. His version leaps off the wall, making Van Dyck’s seem almost reticent. As Rubens and Van Dyck moved in the same circles, they sometimes portrayed the same persons. I have in mind two drawings of Thomas Howard, the Earl of Arundel. (One is in the exhibition, the other in the Ashmolean Museum.) Van Dyck’s restrained version of the powerful aristocrat cannot withstand the technical and psychological impact of the sitter as portrayed by Rubens. Rubens looms large in Van Dyck's career, and he never quite managed to escape from the shadow.
Portraiture, Van Dyck’s specialty once he moved to London in 1632, was generally regarded as a secondary artistic genre. Alsteens quotes a section of Karel Van Mander’s treatise of 1604 and his judgment that portraiture was “this sideroad of art” to which painters turned “because of the allure of profit, or for their survival,” thereby forsaking “to seek or follow the road of history and figures that leads to the highest perfection.” By the metaphor “road of history,” Van Mander means scenes from ancient texts, Classical mythology, the Bible and allegory. The goal of portraiture was to produce an identifiable image of a sitter and his or her status in society and to extol his or her qualities through the use of often transparent symbols. They are solo performances, not symphonies. At best, they informed the viewer of someone’s appearance as it was enhanced with cosmetic accessories, notably female clothing, which cost a great deal more than the painting being produced. Perhaps their profound superficiality explains their appeal to Golden Age collectors.
Van Dyck played the hand he was dealt. and with consummate skill. He was called upon to participate in the creation of the image of the Caroline court, that Arcadian paradise for the well-dressed. He developed a series of tropes such as the languid wrist, the pointed index finger and the mild if refined expression—motifs that could be easily be reproduced by his flourishing workshop. Yet wherever he turned to find more prestigious commissions, there was Rubens staring him the face. When Van Dyck entered the Banqueting House, Whitehall, and raised his eyes to the ceiling, he saw Rubens’ Apotheosis of James I, which had been installed in 1635.
Perhaps the deteriorating political circumstances in England and his ambition to paint subject paintings impelled him to seek a major commission on the Continent. In 1640, he met with the Governor of the Netherlands in Brussels, the cardinal-infante Ferdinand, younger brother of Philip IV. Ferdinand wanted him to finish a painting by Rubens intended for the king in Madrid. Van Dyck was not inclined to share the glory if there was any glory to be shared. By then his health had started to fail. Yet he made a feverish trip to Paris in 1640 in the hopes of winning a commission to decorate the Grande Galerie of the Louvre, the sort of work that would free him from the drudgery of portraiture and secure his reputation as a painter of histories. He failed to impress and the work was apportioned to Nicolas Poussin and Simon Vouet.
Van Dyck died in London in December 1641 at the age of 42. His legacy is a large, scintillating body of portraiture, both in oil and drawing. Had he lived longer, he might have painted the complex works for which he yearned. His place in the hierarchy of European painting is best described by the pithy verdict of Erwin Panofsky on the early Netherlandish master Hans Memling. To paraphrase the renowned art historian, Van Dyck was a major minor painter.
Jonathan Brown is the Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Fine Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
Van Dyck: The Anatomy of Portraiture, Frick Collection, New York, until 5 June