Anthony van Dyck

Sir Anthony Van Dyck was born in Antwerp, March 22, 1599 and died in London, December 9, 1641.

Van Dyck's paintings of Charles I and his court transformed English portraiture. Born to a prominent Flemish silk and linen merchant, Van Dyck became a pupil of Hendrik van Balen and registered with the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke in 1609. By 1618 he was registered as a master, having spent two years as chief assistant to Peter Paul Rubens, whose style greatly influenced his own. Following an initial visit to England in 1620-21, Van Dyck embarked on a six-year journey through Italy and France, during which he worked in Genoa, Rome, Venice, and Palermo. He settled in London in April 1632, and within three months was knighted and made Principal Painter to Charles I. He married one of the ladies-in-waiting to Queen Henrietta Maria and apart from brief trips to the Continent, spent the remainder of his career in London. Van Dyck invested his royal and aristocratic subjects with an aura of effortless glamor and elegance, and as a courtier-artist in the tradition of Titian he achieved a status unprecedented among painters in England.