Van Dyck (Great Painters) - Hardcover

Gritsai, Natalia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1859952267 ISBN 13: 9781859952269

Publisher: Parkstone Press Ltd, 1997

Synopsis

Alfred Moir, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of Caravaggio, also in the Masters of Art Series, has written a compelling study of the seventeenth-century Flemish painter and his oeuvre. It is illustrated with 81 black-and-white reproductions of works by Van Dyck and influential works by other painters, notably Rubens and Titian. Forty full-page color-plates are each accompanied by a commentary about the work, its genesis, its meaning, and its place in Van Dyck's oeuvre.

About this title

Review:

Anthony Van Dyck's painting has tended to suffer from two particularly powerful assumptions. Firstly, that he never escaped the shadow of his great mentor Rubens, and secondly that his work slavishly glorified the ultimately doomed reign of the Stuart King Charles I. Robin Blake's meticulous biography of the Dutch painter, Anthony Van Dyck--A Life goes a long way towards questioning these assumptions about Van Dyck, offering instead a much more complex and sympathetic portrait of his life and work.

Part of the challenge of Blake's biography lies in his admission that Van Dyck "is astonishingly elusive. Like Shakespeare, Van Dyck was greatly celebrated in his time, yet gaps in what we know are like chasms". The result is a great deal of painstaking and detailed local colour, including Van Dyck's early years in Antwerp, his apprenticeship to Rubens, the first mysterious sojourn to England, and subsequent trips to the artistic Holy Grail of Italy. Despite Blake's admirable attempts to offer a more comprehensive, European perspective on Van Dyck, the best sections of the book come in its last hundred pages, which examine Van Dyck's triumphant return to London in 1632, his magnificent paintings of the Stuart court and his extraordinary relationship with Charles I. Blake vividly captures Van Dyck's opulent and prestigious position in the midst of the intrigues of Stuart court society, offering suggestive readings of many of Van Dyck's late portraits and religious works. However, as Blake suggests from the outset, Van Dyck the man tends to get lost in the midst of his prolific output, hidden behind the canvas, just out of view of the grasp of even the most tenacious biographer. Nevertheless, for those interested in Van Dyck, Robin Blake's study is set to become the definitive biography in English for some time to come. --Jerry Brotton

Review:

An excellent read...genuinely interesting and well researched...Blake writes with enormous enthusiasm for his subject.--Antonia Fraser

Provocative and enjoyable while bringing the period convincingly to life.--Andrew Wilton "London Times "

Courageous...a robust celebration of a great painter.--Jonathan Keates "Literary Review "

Blake is truly illuminating.--Peter Campbell "London Review Of Books "

A heroic job...comprehensive and fascinating.--Kristina Cordero "The New York Times "

A lively biography...a highly personal account, which makes up for the sparseness of the written record...well told.--Theodore K. Rabb

About this edition

• Publisher: Parkstone Press Ltd
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 1859952267
• ISBN 13: 9781859952269
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 176