Anthony van Dyck's Death: the Vacancy That Started a Novel
Anthony van Dyck, Self-Portrait, c. 1620–21. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 49.7.25.
On the 9th of December 1641, the Flemish painter Sir Anthony van Dyck died at his house in Blackfriars at the age of forty-two, and the most coveted position in English painting fell suddenly vacant.
As ‘Principalle Paynter in Ordinary to their Majesties’, Van Dyck completely transformed English portraiture with his characteristic elongated figures, graceful hands, and luminous fabrics. He had invented how the English court wished to see itself and how painters could be perceived in England. Before Van Dyck, painters were seen as skilled craftspeople rather than high-status individuals or creative geniuses. But upon his arrival, he became the first artist in Britain to achieve celebrity-like status.
Charles I loved him enough to build a private stone causeway to his studio door from the Thames, so he could regularly visit the Flemish painter’s studio. He also paid for a lavish funeral and a monument in St Paul's Cathedral, where he was buried in the choir next to John of Gaunt, the son of Edward the III. No English painter could rival him.
But not everyone was sorry to learn of his death. His demise signalled a call to arms for painters across England. For every painter who mourned the Flemish master's passing, another quietly calculated what his absence might be worth: a commission that might now come their way, a royal title and pension, and fame. It is one of the least romantic and most human truths of any profession, that another's ruin is so often your opportunity, and that the two can be impossible to tell apart.
That vacancy, and the scramble of lesser, hungrier, more desperate men to fill it, is where my novel Clouded in Clerkenwell begins.
Across the city of London, painters realised the stage was now empty, and whoever was going to take his place would go to whoever was boldest, best-connected, or most willing to lie. Henry and Antonis have no connections and no scruples left. But they do have a fraudulent studio, a concealed body, and four weeks to win over the King before anyone uncovers the truth.
The part that fascinates me
Here is a detail I had to resist putting in the book. Van Dyck's reputation didn't diminish after his death; painters who needed it kept rebuilding it. A century later, English portrait painters, still struggling to be taken seriously, reached back through history and made him their founding saint. They constructed a ‘history’ that his gatherings with fellow artists and collectors were a kind of ‘Virtuosi Club of St Luke,’ and they even emulated the idea by starting social gatherings among painters living in London. Some, like the miniaturist Richard Cosway, modelled their very self-image on the Flemish master. A dead man, still being used by the living painters to get what they wanted, a century after he vanished from the professional stage.
I find that irresistible, because it's the same instinct my characters have. They just do it within days rather than centuries, and with far less dignity.
A question worth sitting with
The men who moved to fill Van Dyck's place were not selfish. They were driven and hungry. As a door had opened, they decided to walk through it, telling themselves, no doubt, that they were simply being sensible. Which is the question my novel keeps circling back to: when we tell ourselves we had no choice, is that the truth or a ploy to absolve ourselves of guilt? You can step into the space a dead man leaves. But does the space ever quite stop being his?
