As a picturesque accessory in portraiture landscape received early recognition in English art. Even the miniaturists found space for landscape backgrounds,[566] and Vandyck, who was painting in England from 1621 to 1641, established the use of landscape elements in large portraits in oil. Sometimes, where the portrait is inevitably in the open air, as in the equestrian portrait of Charles I in the National Gallery, the landscape is worked out with much beauty of detail, but as a rule Vandyck makes use of Nature as an accessory rather than as a full background. Various devices, as an open window or door, a space framed in by heavily draped curtains and massive pillars, or an outlook over a balustrade, serve to enrich the picture by a glimpse of sky, a bright horizon line, or a stretch of vaguely indicated country. He also frequently uses a rock as the direct background, the rock revealing itself as such only at the edge where tufts of foliage or a gnarled tree branch out against the sky and an indeterminate landscape.[567] In no case does Vandyck subordinate the portrait to the landscape, nor does he combine the portrait and the landscape with the idea of securing a general decorative effect. The landscape remains always simply as background or as an enlivening detail. [Illustration: JOHN MAITLAND, DUKE OF LAUDERDALE _By Sir Peter Lely_] Vandyck’s most important successor, Sir Peter Lely, who was in England from 1641 to 1680, but whose great vogue was after 1660, made frequent use of open-air settings, especially in his portraits of women. The “Windsor Beauties”[568] sufficiently attest his command of landscape effects. Princess Mary as Diana, the duchess of Cleveland as Minerva, the duchess of Richmond, the countess of Falmouth, Mrs. Middleton as Pomona, Mrs. Stewart, are fair women whose picturesque beauty is enhanced by the poetic and romantic landscapes against which they stand. There is, to be sure, no attempt at verisimilitude. There is no thought of a real landscape to which the person in the picture has some natural relation. Walpole says in derogation of Lely that his nymphs trail their embroideries and fringes through the thorns and briars of pastoral landscapes, but the fact is that these Dianas and Minervas and innocent shepherdesses of the Nell Gwynn variety are no more _in_ these landscapes than they are actual goddesses or country maidens. The landscape is but a sort of wall-painting or figured tapestry used as a decorative background. These portraits are of importance in the present study because they show that while Lely as portrait painter rightly cared especially for the figure, he had yet an appreciation not common in his time of the beauty of the world about him.