Van Dyck in England develops a version…
1635 CE
Van Dyck in England develops a version of his style that combines a relaxed elegance and ease with an understated authority in his subjects which is to dominate English portrait-painting to the end of the eighteenth century.
Many of these portraits have a lush landscape background.
His portraits of Charles on horseback update the grandeur of Titian's Emperor Charles V, but even more effective and original is his portrait of Charles dismounted in the Louvre.
Although his portraits have created the classic idea of "Cavalier" style and dress, in fact a majority of his most important patrons in the nobility, such as Lord Wharton and the Earls of Bedford, Northumberland and Pembroke, will take the Parliamentarian side in the English Civil War that breaks out soon after his death.