Anne Kirke

Maker Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599 - 1641, active England)

SitterSitter: Anne (Killigrew) Kirke (British, died 1641)

Collections

ClassificationsPAINTINGS

Dateca.1637

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensions87 1/2 x 51 3/8 in. (222.3 x 130.5 cm.) frame: 96 3/4 × 63 1/2 × 2 3/4 in. (245.7 × 161.3 × 7 cm.)

DescriptionThis is a full-length portrait of Anne Kirke (née Killigrew) (1607–1641), dresser to the Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland, one of the most prestigious roles for a woman at court in the 17th century.

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Purchased with funds from the Adele S. Browning Memorial Art Fund

Status

On view

Label TextThis painting commemorates the appointment of Anne Kirke to the position of the Queen’s dresser. It is no surprise that the sitter wears the latest fashions: pearl jewelry and a jewel-adorned amber dress. Its sleeves reveal her lower arms, a provocative sight in this period. The eff ect of grandeur and monumentality that van Dyck gives sitters, seen in the portrait’s full-length format and lavish costume, was widely influential on 18th-century British portrait painters that followed.

Only four years aft er this portrait was painted, Kirke drowned in a tragic barge crash near London Bridge. The Huntington Library holds several publications that commemorate Kirke, including a poem by her niece, the artist and poet Anne Killigrew, published after Killigrew’s untimely death at age twenty-five in 1685.

Bibliography

British paintings at the Huntington

Object number83.4