This confident and elegant Self-Portrait by Sir Anthony van Dyck is one of a group of self-portraits executed by the artist in his later career. Having become one of the most famous artists in Europe, Van Dyck, like his contemporaries Rubens and Rembrandt, painted images of himself from very early in his career, when just a teenager (such as the paintings in the Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna, or the Rubenshuis, Antwerp) onwards. Some are quite flamboyant, such as the famous Self-Portrait with a Sunflower (fig. 1, private collects ion). However, a smaller group of works, painted later in his life, are more restrained, if no less elegant, and afford the modern viewer with a distinctly introspective and emotional self-examination by one of the greatest portrait painters of any age.

The present painting dates to this later phase, circa 1637-1639. In fact, it would appear to be the penultimate example of self-portraiture by Van Dyck, only superseded by the Self-Portrait of circa 1637-1639 formerly in the collects ion of the Earl of Jersey and now in the National Portrait Gallery, London (fig. 2).¹ That picture appears to have remained in the artist’s own collects ion until his death and was later acquired by his admirer, and artistic heir, Sir Peter Lely.² As in the ex-Jersey picture, Van Dyck shows himself bust-length, his head turned to look at the viewer. Here, his aspect serene and self-aware, but not haughty, and he is simply, if elegantly, dressed in black, with a large white collar. He points to himself with his left hand, as if to confirm his own status, and does not wear the gold chain given to him by Charles I, preferring to present himself as a gentleman, albeit in somewhat informal dress (as he invariably did in his self-portraits). This is a portrait of an artist comfortable with his position, and a royal favorite.

Indeed, based on archival records, the present Self-Portrait is almost certainly the work first described in the inventory of the collects ion of King Charles I himself, drawn up between about 1637 and 1639 by his surveyor of pictures, Abraham van der Doort. Van der Doort notes that the portrait hung in Whitehall Palace, in “the little roome Betwene…the Breakfast chamber and the longe gallorie,” where it was “opan de reht lijeht” (upon the right light), meaning the painting was lit from the viewer’s left. The inventory does not specify the support but it does give dimensions that correspond to the present painting. The entry describes the portrait as a “Picture of Sr Anthonie Vandike done by himself to the Shouldrs with his left hand at his breast in an Ovall carved wooden frame.” In a 1934 article in the Burlington Magazine, Gustav Glück was the first to identify the present painting as that recorded in the royal collects ion, quite rightly pointing out that no other self-portrait by Van Dyck matches these descriptions, in terms of the light source, the gesture of the hand, the measurements, and the format.³ At Whitehall, the painting hung in the same space as self-portraits by Peter Paul Rubens and Daniel Mytens.⁴ As the present work does not appear in any payment records to Van Dyck, it was likely a gift from the artist, who no doubt wished to be represented together with his former master and a former rival.

After King Charles I was executed in 1649, Parliament sold his collects ion at Saint James’s Palace, where the Van Dyck self-portrait was listed for £15. It eventually sold on 9 May 1650 for £15.10s to Remigius van Leemput, an artist who frequently copied Van Dyck’s works in England and was possibly an assistant to the master in his studio there. Leemput bought so many works at the royal collects ion sale (forty-three paintings and twelve statues), many for the purpose of resale, that after the Restoration, the commissioners for the return of the king’s property opened a case against him. The present self-portrait was likely recovered at this t.mes as it is next recorded in the collects ions of King Charles II and King James II, respectively. King William III apparently brought the painting to Holland, where it was the only Van Dyck self-portrait recorded in the English royal collects ion after 1688. This work appeared on the so-called “Stanhope List” of pictures requested by English envoy to the Dutch States General, Alexander Stanhope, on behalf of Queen Anne after William III’s death.⁵ Although described in an inventory of his collects ion at Paleis Het Loo as “dog maer gemeen” ("but quite ordinary"), the Dutch refused the request.⁶ The government quietly sold some of the collects ion, including this painting, in 1716 after William III’s successor John William Friso died young and left an empty throne.

Van Dyck self-portraits appeared in several eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sales, but none can be said with certainty to be the present work.⁷ However, the painting must have been available to artists, as a copy of the present self-portrait, possibly by Charles Jervas (1675- 1739), also in an oval format, is now in the National Museum, Belgrade.⁸ In addition, a photograph of a drawing in black, white, and sanguine chalk copying the head of the present painting is in the Oliver Millar archives at the Paul Mellon Centre, London; this appears to date from the late-seventeenth or perhaps early-eighteenth century, and bore a traditional attribution to Lely.⁹ Another probably late-seventeenth-century drawn copy is in the British Museum.¹⁰

The painting is recorded in 1854 with absolute certainty by Gustav Waagen as in the possession of Colonel George Tomline at Orwell Park, Suffolk, whose collects ion also included Rembrandt’s Man in Oriental Cost.mes , formerly in the collects ion of King William II and today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as Bartolomé Estebén Murillo’s Christ Healing the Paralytic, now in the National Gallery, London. Tomline’s heir, George Pretyman, sold the portrait in 1933 at Christie’s, London, where it was acquired by the Antwerp and New York dealer Samuel Hartvelt. The painting was subsequently published by Gustav Glück, who identified it as the same portrait recorded in King Charles I’s collects ion.

An important part of understanding the subsequent history of this Self-Portrait is tied to a campaign of “restoration” that appears to have occurred in the early nineteenth century. By the t.mes the painting was with Colonel Tomline, it had been converted from an oval to a rectangular format by adding spandrels in the four corners. Although reproduced by Glück in 1933 as an oval, the 1933 Christie’s sale catalogue noted it was “in a painted oval,” thus confirming its rectangular shape. In addition to this, early photographs of the picture clearly show that the picture had been extensively covered by later overpaint over the entire background, and in areas like the collage and hands, to “perfect” areas where Van Dyck had used a more fluid and expressionistic technique, a manner of painting that today is exciting and admired (and that Van Dyck especially deployed in his self-portraits), but which in the nineteenth century was considered a fault. It is these additions to the painting, changes in format, and later overpainting that obscured the quality of the picture, despite Glück’s authoritative opinion on the work.

Indeed, within a generation, the painting was sold in 1969 by the estate of Lotta Estelle Backus, widow of New York lawyer Standish Backus, Sr., as “After Van Dyck.” Thereafter it was, in a curious turn of fate, part of the collects ion of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, apparently due to the similarities between the two legendary men’s moustaches. The Buffalo Bill Historical Center sold the portrait in 1988, when it was incorrectly identified as “Manner of Sir Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of a Man." Acquired there by a private collects or, the painting next appeared in the 2004 Van Dyck catalogue raisonné, in which Sir Oliver Millar, on the basis of a black and white photograph probably taken when the picture was with Hartvelt, catalogued it as a later copy. When the painting next appeared at auction in 2006, it was sold as a copy after a lost original due to its overpainted state.

Recently, after a sensitive restoration, the early nineteenth century additions were removed and the painting returned to its original oval shape. The dark overpaint that was added over the background was also removed. In addition, scientific imaging, including X-ray (fig. 3) and infrared reflectography, reveals several important adjustments: Van Dyck originally planned for a longer collar with a different pattern of folds and substantially reworked the left hand, moving it up higher and adjusting the length of the fingers (see fig. 4). Returned to its original format and free of later additions to the paint layer, this Self-Portrait can now be appreciated as an important late masterpiece by Van Dyck and has been exhibited as such at both the Rubenshuis Museum in Antwerp and the Galleria Sabauda in Turin. In the exhibition catalogue produced by the latter, the Reverend Susan Barnes, co-author of the 2004 Van Dyck catalogue raisonné, concurred with Glück that the present work was the portrait that formerly hung in Whitehall Palace. Barnes concluded that it was thus a portrait "truly worthy of a king."

¹ Sold Replica Shoes ’s, London, 9 December, 2009, lot 8 for £8,329,250.
² See Grosvenor 2015-2016, p. 56.
³ See Glück 1934, p. 201, and for a fuller, compelling argument for this identification, see Grosvenor 2015-2016.
⁴ Both of these pictures remain in the Royal collects ion. Rubens: signed and dated 1623, oil on panel, 85.7 by 62.2 cm., inv. no. RCIN 400156; Mytens: circa 1630, oil on panel, 68.3 by 58.9 cm., inv. no. RCIN 404431.
⁵ inv. no. 6: “the head of Van Dyck by himself.” See R. van Leeuwen 1988, p. 73.
⁶ This judgment may have been simply a reflection of the taste of the t.mes : at Van Dyck’s death, a self-portrait left in his collects ion was valued at only 6s.8d, whereas a portrait of Charles I was valued at £5.
⁷ For instance, a Van Dyck self-portrait in which the the left hand of the artist, wearing a black cost.mes with white collar, is visible, appears in three early nineteenth-century Dutch sales. Its dimensions are listed as 30 by 20 pouces (roughly 30 by 20 in.). However, the painting’s support is listed each t.mes as panel, and each lot is described as having been painted for Louis XIV rather than Charles I (though Van Dyck is not known to have made a self-portrait for the French monarch). The sales were: Amsterdam, Schley, 18 September 1811, lot 26: “portrait de ce peintre célèbre, peint par luimême pour Louis XIV; on voit sa main gauche; sa collerette blanche est bien plissée, son habillement est noir. Ce morceau préçieux est tres-bien fini,” bought by Henry Croese; Amsterdam, Waterham, 20 July 1812, lot 13; Amsterdam, Roos, 27 May 1818, lot 17, bought by Albertus Brondgeest.
⁸ Oil on canvas, 66 by 52.2 cm.
⁹ In correspondence with Sir Oliver Millar, September 1987 (location unknown).
¹⁰ London, British Museum, inv. no. 1997,U.65.