Returns to London.—After being chosen honorary president of the Antwerp gild of St. Luke, Van Dyck returned to London before the end of 1635. In spite of the vast number of his later portraits, some of them deserve to be ranked among the most celebrated of his productions. The group of three English royal children in the gallery at Turin (1635), the portraits of Charles I. in the Louvre and in the National Gallery, London, the picture of the Pembroke family at Wilton House, Sir George and Sir Francis Villiers at Windsor and in the National Gallery and the earls of Bristol and Bedford, at Althorp, all belong to the years following the master's return from the Netherlands.
He married, about the end of 1639, Lady Mary Ruthven, daugh ter of Sir Patrick Ruthven and granddaughter of the earl of Gowrie. There are several portraits of her by her husband, the most important being in the Munich gallery, in which she is represented in white satin, playing on the violoncello. There is a capital engraving of her by Bolswert. In another picture (J. C. Harford, London) a handsome lady said to be Mary Ruthven, is represented as "Herminia Putting on Clarinda's Armour." There can be no doubt as to the model having been Margaret Lemon, a celebrated beauty, whose portrait was engraved by W. Hollar and J. Morin and painted by Van Dyck at Hampton Court. She was the most beautiful and celebrated, though far from being the only mistress of Van Dyck.
When the news of Rubens's death reached London (June 1640) Van Dyck contemplated a return to his native country, and a letter from Ferdinand of Austria to Philip IV. speaks of his intended journey to Antwerp on St. Luke's Day (Oct. 18). Rubens had left unfinished a series of paintings commanded by the king of Spain, and Van Dyck had been thought of to give them the finishing touch. But he refused. It was then agreed that he should paint an independent canvas destined to complete the series. Whether Van Dyck found it possible to work during his short stay in the Netherlands is doubtful. It has been suggested that Van Dyck's principal object in travelling to the continent was to be entrusted with the decoration of one of the galleries of the Louvre. Unfortunately the great painter was thwarted in his aspirations. His health was beginning to fail.
The portraits of William II. of Orange and the Princess Mary, now in the museum at Amsterdam, are the last Van Dyck painted in England. Of works dated 1639 the portrait of the Countess
of Portland (Darmstadt) is a fine example; and to the same year belongs a full-length portrait of Arthur Goodwin at Chats worth. Van Dyck sailed in September, and probably spent some time with his Antwerp friends. Early in November he reached Paris, but on Nov. 16 he was compelled to resign his commissions on account of the state of his health. Scarcely three weeks later (Dec. 9, 1641) he died at his residence at Blackfriars. Van Dyck was buried in old St. Paul's, where a Latin inscription was placed on his tomb by Charles I.
An elegy in Cowley's Miscellanies speaks, not only of the painter's talent, but of his amiable disposition. We may perhaps point to the coincidence that a Mrs. Cowley is in Van Dyck's will (of Dec. I) named guardian of his child, Justiniana Anna, born only eight days before her father's death. The painter had in the Netherlands an illegitimate daughter, Maria Theresia, who was entrusted to his sister, and to whom he bequeathed £4,000. Lady Van Dyck became the second wife of Sir Richard Pryse of Gogerddan in Cardiganshire. She was dead in 1645. Justiniana Van Dyck, who was married when scarcely twelve years old to Sir John Stepney of Prendergast, painted a "Crucifixion," with f our angels receiving Christ's blood in chalices. After the Restora tion a pension of £200 for life was granted to Justiniana Van Dyck, who died before 1690.
Properly speaking, Van Dyck cannot be said to have formed a school. He was followed to London by some of his earlier col laborators, and there soon met a considerable number of others. Jan van Reyn, David Beek, Adrian Hanneman, Mathew Merian, John Bockhorst (Lang Jan), Remy van Leemput and Peter Thys were foremost among foreigners, Henry Stone and William Dob son among Englishmen. To their assistance the master owed much ; but they are also responsible for the vast number of constantly recurring copies which go by his name. It often re quires a very discriminating eye to distinguish some of these copies from the original paintings. No school more strikingly reflects the influence of Van Dyck than the British school. Stone, Dobson, George Jameson, Robert Walker and Samuel Cooper were the most fortunate of his continuators, and such masters as Reynolds, Gainsborough, Lawrence and Raeburn owe much to their study of his works.