First Antwerp Period

One of Van Dyck’s earliest known works, as well as his first known self-portrait, this painting is dated, on the basis of his appearance, to the first half of the 1610s, when he was about fifteen. The thick application of the paint is different from that of the other early self-portraits. Despite the bold execution, the artist probably considered the painting a finished work. Within decades of his death, it was acquired for the celebrated Viennese collection of the second Prince of Liechtenstein.

Although Van Dyck seems to have based the features of the young man on his own, this oil sketch is probably not a self-portrait but rather a tronie (head study) the artist could reuse in his history paintings. Figures with similar heads can be found in several compositions by the young Van Dyck. This sketch was enlarged by a later hand to give it a more finished — and salable — appearance. Oil sketches such as this are regularly recorded in seventeenth-century Flemish collections and attest to the early appreciation of even the more roughly executed examples of Van Dyck’s talent.

This study corresponds closely to the portrait of a merchant in Antwerp traditionally identified as a member of the Vincque family. The somewhat coarse style indicates that the drawing — and thus the painting — must predate Van Dyck’s more refined study of a Jesuit missionary, made in January of 1617. It is therefore probably Van Dyck’s earliest preserved drawing and as such suggests that he had a flourishing practice as a painter well before becoming a master in 1618. The full-length format of the picture attests to the family’s social ambitions and their faith in the capacities of the young artist.

This magnificent drawing represents Nicolas Trigault, a Flemish Jesuit missionary to China. Rubens, who had close ties to the Jesuits in Antwerp, dated the drawing in January 1617, when Trigault visited the city to raise funds and recruit new missionaries. His costume combines a Korean cap and the robe of a Chinese scholar, conveying the Jesuits’ desire to assimilate into Chinese culture while keeping a certain distance from it. Rubens beautifully captured the cut, texture, and weight of the robe and recorded the sensitive features of the priest. Although the drawing was formerly attributed to Van Dyck, its technique, style, and finish point firmly to Rubens, whose handwriting can be recognized in the Latin inscription describing the missionary’s costume at upper right.

Frans Snyders was celebrated for his paintings of animals and still lifes and counted the king of Spain among his clients. At the end of the 1610s, Van Dyck collaborated with Snyders on several paintings, and these joint projects may have led him to sit for this portrait by Van Dyck, who was approximately twenty years old at the time. A likely occasion for the commission of this and the depiction of Snyders’s wife, Margareta de Vos, was the couple’s purchase of a large house on Antwerp’s most prestigious street, which still survives today. The architectural setting of a terrace overlooking parkland evokes the sitters’ status as wealthy patricians, while locating the portraits in a single space.

Van Dyck produced a number of self-portraits around 1621 that show a marked development in mood, style, and purpose from his earlier self-portraits. While his previous self-portraits are intimate in character, these later works demonstrate the considerable status the young artist had by then achieved. They illustrate to perfection Giovan Pietro Bellori’s description of Van Dyck as appearing "resplendent in rich attire of suits and court dress," and "by nature grand and eager to become famous." This painting may have been made in England during Van Dyck’s short stay in the winter of 1620 and attests to his transformation into a sophisticated courtier.