The Book of Art for Young PeopleConway, Agnes Ethel
General
The Book of Art for Young People
Conway, Agnes Ethel
Art -- Juvenile literature; Painting
Queen Henrietta Maria was painted even more often than the King. She
is always dressed in some bright shimmering satin; sometimes in yellow,
like the sleeve of William II.'s dress, sometimes in the purest white.
She looks very lovely in the pictures, but lovelier still are the groups
of her children. Even James II. was once a bewitching little creature
in frocks with a skull-cap on his head. His sister Mary, aged six,
in a lace dress, with her hands folded in front of her, looks very
good and grown-up. When she became older, though not even then really
grown-up, she married the William of Orange of our picture. He came
from Holland and stayed at the English Court, as a boy of twelve, and
it was then that Van Dyck painted this portrait of him.
Later on, when they were married, Van Dyck painted them together, but
William was older and looked a little less beautiful, and Mary had
lost the charm of her babyhood. With all her royal dignity and solemnity,
she is a perfect child in these pictures. Refined people, loving art,
have grown so fond of the Van Dyck children, that often when they wish
their own to look particularly bewitching at some festivity, they dress
them in the costumes of the little Mary and Elizabeth Stuart, and revive
the skull-caps and the lace dresses for a fresh enjoyment.
Van Dyck's patrons in England, other than the King, were mostly
noblemen and courtiers. They lived in the great houses, which had been
built in many parts of the country during the reigns of Elizabeth and
her successors. The rooms were spacious, with high walls that could
well hold the large canvases of Van Dyck. Sometimes a special gallery
was built to contain the family portraits, and Van Dyck received a
commission to paint them all. Often, several copies of the same picture
were ordered at one time to be sent as presents to friends and relations.
Usually the artist painted but one himself; the rest were copies by
his assistants.
Van Dyck's portraits were designed to suit great houses. In a small
room, which a portrait by Holbein would have decorated nobly, a canvas
by Van Dyck would have been overpowering. In spite of the fact that
the expressions on the faces are often intimate and appealing,
domesticity is not the mark of his art. In Van Dyck's picture of our
'heir of fame,' the white linen, the yellow satin, and the armour please
us as befitting the lovely face. There is a glimmer of light on the
armour, but you see how different is Van Dyck's treatment of it from
Rembrandt's. Van Dyck painted it as an article of dress in due
subordination to the face, not as an opportunity for reflecting light
and becoming the most important thing in the picture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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