Painted for the king in 1635 for £100, it passed through many hands before it was bought by Louis XV. for Mme du Barry, by whom it was ceded in 1775 to his successor for 24,000 _livres_. [Illustration: PLATE XXIII.—SIR ANTHONY VAN DYCK (1599-1641) FLEMISH SCHOOL No. 1967.—PORTRAIT OF KING CHARLES I. OF ENGLAND (Portrait de Charles Iᵉʳ, roi d’Angleterre (1600-1649)) The King, wearing a white satin coat, red riding-breeches, boots, spurs, and a large felt hat, stands proudly forward towards the left of the composition; his right hand rests on his stick, his left is placed on his hip. The Marquess of Hamilton, in attendance on the King, grasps the bridle of the charger; in the landscape background is a page. Painted in oil on canvas. Signed on a stone in the right foreground:— “CAROLUS I REX MAGNÆ BRITANNIÆ. VAN DIICK F.” 8 ft. 11½ in × 7 ft. (2·72 × 2·12.)] To Van Dyck’s English period, which only terminated with his death in 1641, belong the group of _Charles Louis, Elector Palatine, and Rupert, Prince of Bavaria_ (No. 1969), and the _Portrait of James Stuart, Duke of Lennox_ (No. 1975)—not the _Duke of Richmond_, as stated in the official Catalogue—in the character of Paris. Another twelve pictures are catalogued under Van Dyck’s name, but they are either of minor importance, or, like the _Three Children of Charles I._ (No. 1968), mere studio repetitions. FRANS SNYDERS The powerful personality of Rubens dominated the art of Flanders during the seventeenth century. His direct or indirect influence is traceable in the art of most of his contemporaries and of the painters of the next generation, who divided his artistic heritage without attaining to his universality. Thus his collaborator Frans Snyders (1579-1657), after studying under “Hell Brueghel” and H. van Balen, acquired the bravura of his brushwork and his unrivalled skill in depicting animals in violent movement from Rubens, in whose pictures of the chase he frequently painted the animals, whilst he often had to seek the assistance of other painters for the figures introduced into his own compositions. Among the thirteen pictures from his brush at the Louvre (Nos. 2141-2153) the _Wild Boar Hunt_ (No. 2144) serves best to illustrate Snyders’s power to suggest the furious onrush and wild excitement of the chase. His skill as a still-life painter may be judged from the masterly treatment of the wet glittering fish in the large _Fish Merchants_ (No. 2145). JACOB JORDAENS