Van Dyck and the Making of English Portraiture

Van Dyck and the Making of English Portraiture offers a fresh perspective on painting in early modern England, focusing on the art and legacy of Anthony van Dyck.

As a courtier, figure of fashion, and object of erotic fascination, Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641) transformed the professional identities available to English artists. By turning his portrait sittings into a form of courtly spectacle, Van Dyck inspired poets and playwrights while simultaneously provoking the guardians of traditional hierarchies. A self-consciously Van Dyckian lineage of artists, many of them women, extends from his lifetime to the end of the eighteenth century and beyond.

Recovering the often surprising responses of both writers and painters to Van Dyck’s portraits, this book offers an alternative perspective on English art’s historical self-consciousness. Centred around a series of close readings of artworks and texts, ranging from poems and plays to early biographies and studio gossip, it traces the reception of Van Dyck’s art by artists like Mary Beale, William Hogarth, and Richard and Maria Cosway. This exploration bestows historical specificity on the frequent claim that Van Dyck founded an English school of portraiture.