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Updated: May 25, 2025
The modern stiff corners of the cap are an addition, which is not an improvement; the old cap drooped gracefully from its tuft in the centre, as can still be seen in the portraits of seventeenth-century divines, e.g. in Vandyck's 'Archbishop Laud', so familiar from its many replicas and copies.
Vandyck painted no portraits of the Puritans nor popular leaders of his day; neither did he of the literary men who flourished at that time, with the exception of the court poets, Sir John Suckling and Thomas Carew. I shall not give a list of Vandyck's historical and religious pictures, though they are quite numerous.
Our thrifty Pennsylvanian, West, is assigned the vestibule. Five of his "ten-acre" pictures illustrate the wars of Edward III. and the Black Prince. The king's closet and the queen's closet are filled mostly by the Flemings. Vandyck's room finally finishes the list.
In place of the blank, black factory wall, there is the low wall of some Italian Campo Santo, its painted sides more precious than marbles or gold could have made them; in place of the dull and heavy stone of the Exchange, the glowing mosaics of some southern cathedral; in place of the factory bell and the rush into the steaming and dirty workroom, the bell of a convent on Fiesole, and the slow walk through its cool cloisters; in place of the dead files of uniform ugly houses, Venetian palaces, with the water at their base, reflecting the colors which Giorgione and Titian, housepainters at Venice, left upon their stones; in place of the racket of the street, the quiet greenness of an English lane, or the inaccessible ice and glory of a far-off mountain summit; in place of the burnt waste of fields covered with ashes and coal-dust, the burning stretch of the desert with the Sphinx looking out over it century after century; in place of the shower coming down through the dirty air to wash the dirty roofs, a storm breaking over the sea-shore rocks, or beating down on the broken wreck; instead of the drabbled calico of the factory girl and her face old before its time, the satins of Vandyck's beauties, and the fair looks of Sir Peter Lely's heroines; instead of Manchester mayors and masters of factories, Tintoret's noble Venetian counsellors and doges, and Titian's Shakspearian men.
A fleet was equipped, and as an atonement for the wrongs done to the elder Northumberland, the King gave the command to his son, whose portrait as Admiral forms one of the noblest of Vandyck's canvases. But Northumberland, though brave to a fault, was no seaman, and the whole enterprise threatened to end in ridicule. Stung to the quick, Charles again turned to the nation.
Here you may see two fine Rubens, a portrait of Philip IV of Spain, and a Silenus with Bacchantes, a great picture of James I of England with his family, painted by some "imitator" of Vandyck, though who it was in Genoa that knew both Vandyck and England is not yet clear; a Ribera, a Reni, a Tintoretto, a Domenichino, and above all else Vandyck's Boy in White Satin, in the midst of these ruined pictures which certainly once would have given us joy.
The visitor to the Massachusetts State-House may see, hanging in its Senate-Chamber, tolerably well preserved on its canvas, what is believed, on trustworthy evidence, to be Vandyck's own painting of Winthrop.
One of the more personal acts of kindness which are related of him is that having seen by chance a picture which was painted by William Dobson, Vandyck sought him out, found him in a poor garret, instructed him with great care, introduced him to the king, and, in short, by his kind offices so prepared the way that Dobson was made sergeant-painter to the king after Vandyck's death, and won the title of "the English Tintoretto."
But come, Alice, forward; the colours are mixed on your pallet forward with something that shall show like one of Vandyck's living portraits, placed beside the dull dry presentation there of our ancestor Victor Lee."
It was owned by Sir Peter Lely and Sir Joshua Reynolds, and is now at Belvoir in the collection of the Duke of Rutland. We cannot help being sorry for Vandyck's great disappointment when he knew that his work could not be done. He was weak in health and much in debt, for the king could not pay him his pension nor what he owed him for pictures. The artist grew sad and discouraged.
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