- Private collection, Norfolk

- Anonymous sale, London (Sotheby’s), 5 July 2012, no. 205, unsold

- With Clase Fine Art, London, by 2016

- Anonymous sale, London (Sotheby’s), 18 May 2020, no. 87

- S. Alsteens, ‘A Portraitist’s Progress’, in S. Alsteens and A. Eaker (eds.), Van Dyck: the anatomy of portraiture, exh. cat. New York (The Frick Collection) 2016, pp. 29, 37, note 121

- J. Vander Auwera and J. Davies (eds.), The Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project: http://jordaensvandyck.org/panel/lords-newport-and-goring/

 Oil sketches have a particular charm. They are marked by an irresistible spontaneity and offer a peak into the artist’s mind. Compared to drawn sketches they usually show a more complex, advanced stage of the materialization of the thinking process in the runup to the final artwork. They also impart valuable insights about the artist’s studio practice.

A sizable group of oil sketches exists by Van Dyck. [1] They can be roughly divided according to their function into preparatory studies and copies that served as modelli for engravers or incidentally as a starting point for tapestry designs. A large group were made in preparation of largescale paintings of Biblical themes and subjects from classical mythology, literature or history and may also have served as presentation pieces for patrons. For his enormous project of engraved portraits called Iconographie he drew and painted modelli in oils for his engravers. A third group constitutes copies after painted compositions that were meant as models for printmakers. These include both historical subjects and portraits. They defy the term sketch in their relative detailedness.

Fig. 2, Sir Anthony van Dyck, Magistrates of Brussels Assembled around the Personification of Justice, Paris, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, oil on panel, 26.3 x 58.5 cm

The few preparatory studies in oil for painted portraits that have been preserved are like the majority of the other sketches in a monochrome palette, mostly on panel and of tiny dimensions.[2] An early grisaille sketch exists for Van Dyck’s portrait of the collector and merchant Lucas van Uffel, but its date and function are still open to debate and it is much more detailed than for instance our sketch.[3] Similar in handling and in the degree of sketchiness to our work is the small painting Van Dyck made somewhere between 1628 and 1634 in brown for his large group portrait of the Magistrates of Brussels Assembled around the Personification of Justice which sadly was destroyed in 1695 (fig. 2).[4] Also highly comparable in this respect and just like our sketch from the English period is another study in brown heightened with white of a military commander on horseback.[5] If the final painting was ever executed is unknown. In its focus on general aspects such as composition and chiaroscuro our sketch is furthermore strikingly akin to a grisaille of Charles I and his family that the Royal Collection recently acquired, a preparatory work for Van Dyck’s well-known Greate Peece (fig. 3).[6] Finally, Van Dyck’s grisaille sketch for what would have become his most ambitious and most expensive enterprise had it been carried out, must be mentioned here: The Procession of the Knights of the Garter on St George’s Day (fig. 4).[7] The cursory style and rapid dashes of white paint give these panels a spirited immediacy.

Fig. 3, Sir Anthony van Dyck, Sketch of Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria with their two eldest children, Prince Charles and Princess Mary, London, The Royal Collection Trust, oil on panel, 19.7 x 23.5 cm

Fig. 4, Sir Anthony van Dyck, Procession of the Knights of the Garter, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, oil on panel, 29 x 132 cm

 Van Dyck’s output of portraits was enormous; more than 260 have been preserved. Many are live-size and full-length. This number would account for on average two portraits a week, and many portraits have been lost. Van Dyck’s production clearly peaked during his last English period (1632-1641). In view of this vast production, the rarity of preparatory oil sketches begs the question of how the artist went about in processing so many commissions. It seems a precondition that he worked according to a highly rationalized procedure in which assistants played a role not to be neglected. Were oil sketches part of this and are we to believe that a large number of them have vanished? Or was the use of preparatory oil sketches confined to specific circumstances?

To answer this question it is paramount to review other aids of preparation the artist employed in his practice as portrait painter. Alsteens assumes that Van Dyck at the beginning of his career took recourse to detailed drawings in black and red chalk in which he focused on pose and dress, even though only one has been preserved.[8] In 1623, when working in Genoa Van Dyck painted a detailed study on canvas of Elena Grimaldi Cattaneo’s face from life in preparation for his full-length portrait of her.[9] The attribution of other oil sketches from Van Dyck’s Italian period is contested, making it hard to tell if sketches in oils had become a standard step in the master’s preparation of grand-scale portraits. From this same period, however, dates a large drawing in brush and brown ink with a worked-out composition of a cardinal’s portrait, possibly in preparation for the well-known portrait of Bentivoglio.[10] Quite different in its lack of the painterly use of mid-tones with the brush is a quickly executed pen drawing, made in preparation for a not preserved full-length portrait of a nun.[11] In order to quickly record an initial idea for a portrait with concern for composition and dress Van Dyck often used pen and ink, for instance in another rare example to be found in Van Dyck’s Italian sketchbook, which contains the preparatory sketches for the pair of portraits of Robert Shirley and his wife Theresa.[12] From around 1634 two individual head studies in oil survive that Van Dyck would have used for his already-mentioned group portrait of the magistrates of Brussels.[13] The above shows a wide range of techniques and materials that Van Dyck used in preparation for finished portraits but little to go on as to what was customary in his workshop.

Evidence for an efficient working procedure which includes the use of painted sketches of the face comes from a valuable eyewitness account. The French artist and art critic Roger de Piles (1635-1709) reiterates what he heard from the famous banker and collector Everhard Jabach (1618-95) who had sat for Van Dyck for several portraits during the 1630s:

After having lightly dead-colour’d the face [ébauché un portrait in the French original, referring to the largely monochrome head study in oil], he put the sitter into some attitude he had before contrived; and on the grey paper, with white and black crayons, he designed, in a quarter of an hour, his shape and drapery, which he disposed in a grand manner, and an exquisite taste. After this he gave the drawing to the skilful people he had about him, to paint after the sitter’s own cloaths, which, at Vandyke’s request, were sent to him for that purpose. When his disciples had done what they could to these draperies, he lightly went over them again; and so, in a little time, by this great knowledge, displayed the art and truth which we at this day admire in them.[14]

Ample proof confirms that Van Dyck preferred to paint the sitter’s face work directly in oils either sketching the face first on a separate small canvas or panel or working directly on the primed canvas of the actual painting. Furthermore, by 1628 Van Dyck indeed seems to have adopted the habit of making preparatory drawings on tinted paper for painted portraits. For the 1630s, which were largely spent in London, more drawings related to painted portraits are known than for any other decade. The miniaturist Edward Norgate (1581-1650), who knew Van Dyck well, discerningly noted the difference between the early drawings of the 1620s, which he called ‘neat exact and curious’ and later ones: ‘juditious, never exact’.[15] Another miniature painter who apparently sat for a nowadays unknown portrait, Richard Gibson (1615-90), described these drawings more precisely: ‘Vandyke woud take a little piece of blue paper upon a board before him, & look upon Life & draw his figures & postures all in Suden lines, as angles black Chalk & heighten with white chalk’.[16] What is important to note is that Van Dyck seems to have executed these rapid sketches of poses from life with the sitter in front of him, so not with a workshop assistant assuming the desired body pose. Moreover, these drawings on coloured paper fulfilled the same purpose as our oil sketch and the sketch for the portrait of Charles I and his family, namely to settle composition, the fall of drapery and chiaroscuro. Alsteens suggests that Van Dyck in fact ‘regularly prepared his compositions of portraits in this way’.[17] If that is true, more are bound to surface. Finally, it is important to note that none of Van Dyck’s three painted grisaille sketches – our work, the Brussels magistrates and the Royal Family – concern portraits of individuals, except for the sketch of a commander on horseback mentioned a little earlier. It is plausible Van Dyck limited the use of this type of oil sketch for more complex compositions and important clients. 

The present sketch is a preparatory work for Van Dyck’s double portrait of Mountjoy Blount, 1^st Earl of Newport (c. 1597-1666) and George, Lord Goring (1608-57) in the Egremont Collection in Petworth House (fig. 5).[18] Newport and Goring were friends and connected by marriage, Newport's wife’s nephew being married to Goring's sister. They were prominent courtiers who fought for King Charles I during the Bishops’ Wars, the first as General of Artillery in the North and the second as Lieutenant-General of Cavalry. The natural son of Charles Blount, Earl of Devonshire, and his lover and future wife Penelope Devereux, Newport inherited a large estate upon his father’s death, rose to become a royal favourite at James I’s court and was created Earl of Newport in the Isle of Wight in July 1627. He accrued a fortune through his appointment as Master of Ordnance on 31 August 1634 and displayed a shrewd business sense on several other occasions. Opportunism likewise fueled his political ambitions and made him vacillate between royalist and anti-royalist sympathies time and again.

Fig. 5, Sir Anthony van Dyck, Double-portrait of Mountjoy Blount, 1^st Earl of Newport (c. 1597-1666) and George, Lord Goring (1608-57), Petworth House, Sussex, The Egremont Collection (The National Trust), oil on canvas, 128.3 x 151.1 cm

The sketch and ensuing portrait can be dated to 1639 on the basis of the martial trappings that obviously refer to the sitters’ role in the First Bishops’ War in that year, hostilities that were a foretaste of the English Civil War.[19] Goring, the eldest son of George Goring, 1st Earl of Norwich, who had been made a colonel in the Dutch army through the efforts of his father-in-law, Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork and was wounded at the Siege of Breda in 1637, returned to England early in 1639 and was made governor of Portsmouth. The statesman, diplomat and historian Edward Hyde, 1^st Earl of Clarendon (1609-74) gave a rather derogatory description of his character, writing that he ‘would, without hesitation, have broken any trust, or done any act of treachery to have satisfied an ordinary passion or appetite’.

Fig. 6, Sir Anthony van Dyck, Double-portrait of Mountjoy Blount, 1^st Earl of Newport (c. 1597-1666) and George, Lord Goring (1608-57), The Newport Restoration Foundation, Newport, Rhode Island, oil on canvas, 121.9 x 144.8 cm

Related to the double-portrait in Petworth is the one in The Newport Restoration Foundation, Newport, Rhode Island, showing Newport frontally and Goring in profile view (fig. 6).[20] Around this same time both Newport and Goring had themselves portrayed individually. Newport is shown at full length in front of his army tent with soldiers in the background holding his baton of command (fig. 7).

[1] According to the entry in the catalogue for the sale, London (Sotheby’s), 18 May 2020, no. 87.

[1] Alsteens 2016, p. 37, note 121.

[1] Not including the more detailed studies in oil in colour and those made for the Iconographie, around fifteen such works are preserved, see S.J. Barnes et al., Van Dyck: a complete catalogue of the paintings, New Haven 2004, nos. II.69, III.16, III.21, III.23, III.27, III.36, III.40, III.42, III.48, III.53, III.59, III.63, III.169, III.178.

[1] An exception is Van Dyck’s sketch on canvas in which he recorded the likenesses of Princess Elizabeth and Princess Anne from life: Barnes et al. 2004, no. IV.63.

[1] Barnes et al. 2004, pp. 208-09, no. II.69.

[1] Barnes et al. 2004, p. 374, no. III.169.

[1] Barnes et al. 2004, pp. 380-01, no. III.178.

[1] Unpublished except for the mention in Alsteens 2016, p. 37, note 121 and the website of the Royal Collection: https://www.rct.uk/collection/search#/9/collection/408584/sketch-of-charles-i-and-queen-henrietta-maria-with-their-two-eldest-children.

[1] Barnes et al. 2004, p. 476, no. IV.59.

[1] Alsteens 2016, p. 7. Study of a Standing Man, Washington, National Gallery of Art. See: New York 2016, pp. 67-69, no. 6.

[1] Washington, Smithsonian American Art Museum, oil on canvas, 43 x 31 cm. Barnes et al. 2004, no. II.46.

[1] Paris, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la ville de Paris, Petit Palais, brush and brown ink over black chalk and graphite, 396 x 263 mm. See: New York 2016, pp. 88-89, no. 14.

[1] Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, pen and brown ink, 157 x 108 mm. See: New York 2016, pp. 97-99, no. 18.

[1] For which see K. Hearn (ed.), Van Dyck and Britain, exh. cat. London (Tate) 2009, pp. 52-55, where the sketches are erroneously dated later than the portraits in the captions of the drawings.

[1] Both Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, both canvas, 52 x 46 cm. Barnes et al. 2004, pp. 388-89, nos. III.196-97.

[1] Quote taken from Alsteens 2016, p. 18.

[1] Quote taken from Alsteens 2016, p. 27.

[1] Ibid.