Landscape

Anthony Dyck

Summary

A reproduction produced by the Vasari Society of a drawing by Sir Anthony van Dyck. The drawing is of a landscape. The foreground is very bare. A thick cluster of trees stand in the top right of the drawing, and two buildings with tall, sloping roofs are on the left. Van Dyck's signature is in the bottom right hand corner with a small symbol, possibly an artist's easel. Text from the accompanying booklet produced by the Vasari Society: "No. 15 SIR ANTHONY VAN DYCK (b. 1599; d. 1641) LANDSCAPE British Museum, 1897-4-10-16. From the Richardson Senr., and Warwick Collections. Pen and sepia. 19.1 x 29.9 cm. (7 1/2 x 11 3/4 in.). The gossip of his less successful contemporaries, coupled with his luxurious way of life and his rather affected self-portraits, have left an abiding impression of Van Dyck as pittore cavalleresco. This impression, all his unparalleled industry, pictorial science, and superb insight into human character have not yet wholly dispelled. Van Dyck's rare studies of landscape are additional proof, if proof were needed, that under his splendid exterior there lived a student of nature as serious and sincere as Constable himself. The drawing here reproduced evidently belongs to a period of transition. Something of Rubens and Flanders, something of Titian also may be traced in the penwork; but the trees are real English trees like that which occupies the centre of the background of the great equestrian portrait of Charles I in the National Gallery, and we may reasonably ascribe this sketch to the same period, 1635-6. This dating, too, leaves time for the growth of that wonderful freshness, freedom, and truth which make his few landscape sketches in colour unique of their kind and period. C. J. H."