SR. ANTHONY, one of the greatest portrait painters that have ever lived, was the son of Francis Van Dyck, and of his first wife, Cornelia Kerboom (or according to the testimony of connections of his second wife, now resident in Antwerp, Maria Kupers or Kuipers), and was born on the 22d of March 1599. Some of his biographers make his father a glass-painter, others a worsted manufacturer; but, be he what he might, he was well to do in the world, and could gratify the early longings of his son in numerous important respects. The lad's mother is reported to have been skilled in embroidery, and to have worked landscapes and figures with her needle with much taste and skill. Thus, he had his eye early familiarized with exquisite gradations of form, and with all the refinements of colour which the thread manufacturer could invent. Having displayed at an early age a decided talent for drawing, his parents encouraged him in the art, and were no long time in discovering what a treasure had been committed to their charge in young Anthony Van Dyck. Henry Van Balen, the painter, who had been a valued pupil of Rubens, and who had improved himself by a sojourn in Italy, was induced to take the youth under his charge and teach him his art. This occurred in 1610, when Van Dyck was just in his eleventh year; young enough, certainly, even to satisfy the manufacturer of the proverb of "learn young, learn fair." How "fair," he did learn, we shall see. Mastering the preliminary difficulties of his art with surprising facility, Van Dyck, with much of that youthful ambition peculiar to genius, and with a good deal, perhaps, too, of his own constitutional vanity, expressed a wish, in 1615, to enter the school of Rubens. The paintings of this great master had already attained so wide a celebrity, that it is not strange to find an ambitious young artist anxious to connect himself with so distinguished a school. The parents of Van Dyck were both able and willing to help him forward, and he accordingly transferred his easel to the studio of Rubens. The youth set to work with a zeal that astonished even his master, and in a short while he was ahead of all his competitors. Rubens, to mark his esteem for the vigour and care of his execution, employed him to make drawings of his master's works for the engravers who were busy with prints from those designs. There is a pleasing anecdote ordinarily told in illustration of Van Dyck's superiority; but unfortunately it is better suited to gratify the feelings than to please the intelligence, when one looks closely at it. Here is the story. Rubens, having left his studio once, on his favourite evening ride, the too curious youths who assisted him, anxious to obtain a glimpse of what their master was engaged on, stole into his room, and after inspecting a piece, which was yet shining from the final touches of his brush, gave way to some of that boisterous levity peculiar to their years, and jostled Van Dyck against the wet painting. Filled with the greatest consternation, they unanimously implored Van Dyck to try and restore it. Van Dyck did his best, but the quick eye of Rubens found him out; and his ready generosity forgave the offence, as he relished hugely the attempt to conceal it. It is a pity this pretty story hangs so badly together, for both Descamps and Mensaert, in their several works, say the accident occurred to two several pictures, to which on other grounds it is obvious it could not have occurred. For, according to the former author, it was the "Descent from the Cross" that met with the blemish, a picture that was completed in 1612, three years before Van Dyck entered his studio; and, according to the latter, it was the "St Sebastian in the Church of the Augustines," a picture which was not finished till 1628, when Van Dyck had returned from Italy. Yet the occurrence may have taken place nevertheless.

Certain biographers, of the meaner sort, let it be hoped, have industriously circulated a report of the jealousy of Rubens of Van Dyck's abilities, and have sought to lay at the door of the great Fleming Van Dyck's subsequent pursuit of portraiture. Rubens certainly advised his pupil to abide by portraits, and neither time nor Van Dyck has yet convicted this judgment of dulness, whatever may be thought of its sincerity. Rubens, we suspect, was altogether above such mean jealousies; and this story must, we fear, trace its origin to some envious person, who disliked the master, or who regarded the scholar with over-enthusiasm.

In 1620, Van Dyck visited England, but not meeting with the encouragement he expected, he, on the advice of Rubens, set out for Italy. Before doing so, Van Dyck left with his master three exquisite memorials of his pencil, in a portrait of Rubens' first wife, "Isabella Brandt" (not of his second wife, as some assert), an "Ecce Homo," and "the Seizure of our Saviour in the Garden of the Mount of Olives;" and Van Dyck received in return one of the finest horses in his master's stud. A love-affair detained Van Dyck in the village of Savelthem longer than his friends could have wished. A master of words would have sung the praises of his mistress; this master of forms resolved to paint his one. He introduced his enchantress and her parents as the members of a "Holy Family," and in genuine cavalier style represented himself on horseback as "St Martin dividing his cloak with a beggar." Happily, as some would say, he took leave of this pretty girl, and pushed on for Venice. The florid colouring of Rubens, Van Dyck had learned to trace to the influence of the Venetian school; and he resolved, now that he was in the city, to sit at the feet of Titian and the other great colourists of that school while his money lasted. Leaving Venice, he proceeded to Genoa, where the nobles and wealthy merchants of the city were only too glad to have themselves perpetually imprisoned on canvass by the hand of such an artist. After a time, he went to Rome, whither the glorious productions of Michael Angelo and of Raphael attracted him. He was a guest in the palace of Cardinal Bentivoglio during his stay, whose portrait displays in an eminent degree the great advancement made by Van Dyck during his study in Venice. Many palaces in Rome can boast to the present day of having more than one picture by this great Flemish portrait-painter. Disgusted, it is said, with the intemperance and other kindred vices of the Flemish artists in Rome, after a stay of two years, he accompanied the Chevalier Nani into Sicily. It is not unlikely that there was some truth also in the report that Il pittore cavalleresco found himself too important a personage to waste his precious hours in Roman bagnios and beer-houses. In Palermo, he painted the viceroy, and Soffionisha Angosciola, the celebrated painstress, then in her 91st year and quite blind. After paying a hasty visit to Florence, he returned to Antwerp in the end of the year 1626.

Of course, an artist with such brilliant antecedents would not remain long idle. He was urgently solicited by guilds and corporations, by private individuals and by public bodies, to lend his pencil in aid of some great undertaking of personal or public vanity, of social or ecclesiastical adornment. The first work of importance painted by Vandyck, after his return from Italy, was an altar-piece for the church of the Augustins. Reynolds says of this picture, in 1809, "it in some measure disappointed my expectations." Being commissioned by some ignorant canons of the church of Courtray to paint a grand altar-piece for their order, the stupid churchmen eyed the performance with much apparent curiosity, and finally came to the sage conclusion, that the artist was a mere "dauber." The same brotherhood afterwards repented of this rash judgment when they heard of the great fame of the painting, and tried to induce Vandyck again to embark in the service of the church. But the painter replied, there were daubers now in Courtray without calling any from Antwerp. The great painting of "Christ crucified between the two Thieves," in the church of the Recollets, in Mechlin, is by Van Dyck, and is pronounced by Reynolds "one of the first pictures in the world." It is full of that "soft precision of the clear Vandyck" of which the poet sung in after-years.

During the five years which this artist stayed in Flanders, after his return from Italy, he was very laboriously employed, and painted many of the principal commanders who afterwards figured in the thirty years' war. In 1632, Van Dyck came to England, invited thither probably by the king. He was lodged, on his arrival in London, with Edward Norgate, a protege of the Earl of Arundel, until apartments were provided for him in the Blackfriars. The arrival of Van Dyck was the signal for Daniel Mytens and Cornelius Jansen to quit the court of England. To an address eminently courtly and refined, Van Dyck added great attractions of person and attire, which so won the heart of Charles, that he made him a knight in three months from his arrival, and bestowed upon him the royal portrait set in brilliants and attached to a gold chain. Add to this, that, on the 17th of October 1633, he received from the crown the gift of a yearly pension of L200, besides the necessary patronage by the nobility; and we may form some estimate of the style of dress and the grandeur of equipage which this princely genius now indulged in, seeing that fortune showered down her gifts so lavishly upon him. Poor Van Dyck was now the rage, and if the king moored the royal barge almost daily in the neighbourhood of Blackfriars, the fashionables thought a lounge in his studio was indispensable for their daily existence. He had too great a relish for "gallantry," as it was politely phrased in those days, and one of his mistresses, Margaret Lemon by name, was almost as notorious as the Nell Gwynn of his royal master. The simple maiden of Savelthem was altogether forgotten now. Hard work and gallantry soon exhausted Van Dyck's strength, which was never very robust. The short, finely rounded, graceful figure, could not stand this pleasure-seeking long. He is described by John Lievens, not long after Sir Anthony came to England, as "emaciated and feeble," foolishly sitting over his crucible in search of the philosopher's stone! The king and his friends saw with some concern the wreck that this great artist was fast becoming. The sorrow, perhaps, was not of the most extreme kind, resembling, as it did, much more closely the grief of the eastern dervish over his moribund hen with the golden eggs, than that intelligent pity which men have a right to expect from their kind. Yet it was real so far as it went. Those grand personages accordingly found him a wife in the person of Maria Ruthven, granddaughter of the first Earl of Gowrie, who, it was hoped, would in time lead him into more quiet and temperate habits. If the matrimonial state tended to sober Van Dyck, it rendered him very un- happy by affording him leisure for reflection. He had done nothing yet worthy of his own ambition in England, and so indifferent was his health that he could not promise himself a long life. He had wasted, it was clear, the last few years, and he was perpetually racked by the exquisite torture of which a highly strung nature is alone capable. While in this state of mind, he suddenly conceived the idea of decorating the walls of the banqueting-room at Whitehall, of which his old master, Rubens, had formerly ornamented the ceiling. The design was a grand one, and the price to be paid for the execution of it must correspond. L75,000 is said to have been the sum which Van Dyck asked for the performance of this great task. His friend, Sir Kenelm Digby, represented the matter to the king, but as the royal coffers were none of the fullest, Charles declined pledging himself for so large a sum. Add to all this, that, from the partial and niggardly parsimony of the treasury, many pictures which Van Dyck had already painted for a stipulated sum, were very greatly reduced at the time of payment. The disappointed artist went to Paris in the hope of obtaining the painting of the Louvre; but Nicolas Poussin, an inferior artist to Van Dyck, was there before him; and, with frustrated hopes and increasing ill health, Van Dyck returned to England to die. His end occurred at his own residence at Blackfriars, on the 9th of December 1641, in the forty-second year of his age. He was buried on the 11th of the same month in St Paul's Cathedral, near to the tomb of John of Gaunt, where his ashes still repose.

Van Dyck, curious to say, after all his lavish expenditure, died comparatively wealthy. His wife and daughter were tolerably provided for, and he left an illegitimate daughter L4000. The last of the English descendants of Van Dyck died in 1825. (For critical notices of the works of Van Dyck, see the articles ARTS, Fine, and PAINTING.)