With a grandly conceived and brilliantly drawn chalk figure study on one side, and an abundance of rapid pen studies for various compositions, dashed off in an apparent stream of consciousness, on the other, this celebrated sheet encapsulates all that the brilliant young Van Dyck was capable of doing as a draughtsman, at the pivotal moment, in his late teens, when he was interacting most intensely with his great.mes ntor, Sir Peter Paul Rubens, and also finding his own firm feet as an artist.
The chalk figure study, preparatory for the key early composition of The Healing of the Paralytic, is the most important of all those that Van Dyck made during this period, around 1617-20, and sheds fascinating light on his relationship with Rubens; though clearly inspired by the monumental figure studies that Rubens made throughout his career (such as those for the Antwerp Cathedral Raising of the Cross, one of which was recently sold in these Rooms1), Van Dyck’s equally large scale figure is essentially calligraphic, not sculptural, which would remain a fundamental difference between the draughtsmanship of these two great artists. No other Van Dyck drawing of similar significance and quality has appeared on the market since this sheet was itself last sold at auction, in 1986.
As Anne-Marie Logan described, in her revealing essay on the artist’s early drawings2, ‘The Van Dyck we are most familiar with today as a draftsman is based almost entirely on the many preliminary studies he made for a mere eight paintings…. All date from the short t.mes the artist was closely associated with Rubens, 22 years his senior, from about 1617/18 to 1620.’3 It is for one of those paintings, The Healing of the Paralytic, that the half-length chalk study of a bearded old man on the recto of the present sheet is a study. Executed on a scale seen only very rarely in Van Dyck’s figure studies, with extremely dashing, flowing and confident stokes of black chalk, elaborated and rendered more three-dimensional with touches of red chalk in the neck and ear, and deftly applied white chalk highlights, this is also one of the most colouristic and complex of all the known figure studies of this exceptional draughtsman, who was never one to shy away from either spontaneity or technical originality.
In fact, the related painting exists in two autograph versions, one in Neuburg an der Donau (fig.1)4, the other in the collects ion of Her Majesty the Queen, at Buckingham Palace (fig.2).5 These serene, monumental compositions, showing the figures in three-quarter length, with a grandeur that strongly reflects the influence of Italian masters ranging from Leonardo to Titian, are almost identical, and there has been considerable debate regarding which of them should be considered the first, prime version – something that a lack of early documentation does nothing to resolve. On the one hand, there are a number of pent.mes nti in the London version, suggesting Van Dyck was still developing the composition as he went along. On the other, these changes are generally not incorporated in the Neuburg painting. One theory – appealing but unprovable – is that Van Dyck painted the London version first as a work for the Rubens workshop, then revisited the composition in a more independent way, in his own voice.6
One of the most striking differences between the two paintings is that in the Royal collects ion version, the figure of the paralytic to the left is shown clean-shaven, whereas in the second painting he is bearded, as in the present drawing. Very clearly, the drawing served more directly as a study for the Neuburg picture, though that still does not totally clarify which painting came first, and in both cases there are other differences from the drawing, such as the fact that the paralytic's left hand is raised.
The fact that Van Dyck made this grand, large-scale figure study in chalk for the key figure in his composition reflects very closely Rubens’s working method, when developing his ideas towards their final expression. During these early years of his career, Van Dyck learned much from the methods of his great.mes ntor, but did not always adhere to these methods in every respect.
The closest links are to be found in the rapidly executed pen and ink studies for compositions dating from these years, and there is often some scholarly difficulty in distinguishing between the two artists’ works of this type.7 After this stage, Rubens then tended to move on to coloured oil sketches for the whole composition, and finally made large scale studies of the key figures. Van Dyck employed, like almost all artists, the first of these techniques, and adopted from Rubens, during these early Antwerp years, the third, but never incorporated the regular use of oil sketches into his working method. Just like Rubens, Van Dyck used substantial chalk figure studies only late in the creative process, to finalise the pose and modelling of the main figures, once the arrangement of the composition itself was fully established. The extent to which Van Dyck was inspired by Rubens in adopting this use of large chalk figure studies is underlined by the fact that for another of his early paintings, the Christ Crowned with Thorns, in the Prado, he actually ended up basing his painted figure on a study by Rubens, in Rotterdam8, rather than on the one that he himself had made for the same figure.9 Such a use of the older master’s study is witness not only to Van Dyck’s admiration for Rubens, but also to a reciprocal respect, as it is inconceivable that Van Dyck could have made use of one of Rubens’s major figure studies without the latter’s encouragement and blessing. Given how fiercely protective and controlling Rubens was when it came to his artistic capital and images of his works, this is indeed a remarkable occurrence. This was, though, the moment when the young Van Dyck was working so closely with Rubens, collaborating on the massive Decius Mus cycle.
It is reasonable to suppose that Van Dyck was extremely keen, when painting The Healing of the Paralytic, to impress his mentor and guide, and he must have made numerous rapid pen studies, working out the composition, but none of them have survived. Three compositional drawings by the artist representing the same subject are known, in Rotterdam, Paris and Vienna, but they are very different in conception to the finished painting.10 It is true that Van Dyck somet.mes s made many different studies leading towards his final composition, changing his mind a great deal, and even reversing compositions, in a manner unusual among his northern contemporaries and more akin to what we see in the work of, for example, Guercino, but all the same, the pen drawings of The Healing of the Paralytic cannot reasonably be considered direct preparatory studies for the London/Neuburg painting. In fact, the present drawing is the only surviving study for this important early composition.
This sheet does, though, have on the verso a series of rapidly executed studies, in pen and ink, showing at least four different figure groups, but they do not relate to the grand chalk figure study on the recto. As Anne-Marie Logan has described, it was not, however, unusual for Van Dyck to use the two sides of his sheet for entirely unrelated studies.11 Here, using the paper horizontally rather than vertically, the artist has dashed off in pen and ink four distinct scenes. Other than agreeing that none of these are studies for The Healing of the Paralytic, scholars have struggled to establish to what they might in fact relate. Ludwig Burchard12 believed they represented Christ at the pool of Bethesda, while Christopher Brown suggested the figures to the right could be linked with Rubens’s Assumption of the Virgin in Düsseldorf, and the Pentecost in Neuburg, but exactly how is unclear.
It is, though, for the spectacular, large-scale, three-quarter length study on the recto that this drawing has always been so admired. Exploring an approach to figure drawing so brilliantly employed by Rubens, experimenting with a combination of colors of chalk that Rubens also used so effectively, this drawing is a monument to the closeness of the artistic relationship between Rubens and Van Dyck, during that key period around 1617-20. Yet it is also emblematic of the profound differences between the two artists. The large figure studies of Rubens are far more modelled and sculptural, full of tension and power, but suggesting movement that has been frozen for an instant by the virtual camera of the artist’s vision. In this study by Van Dyck, on the other hand, the dashing, passionate chalk lines create a surface that is in constant, flickering motion before our eyes, and a form that is less three-dimensional, perhaps, but profoundly and permanently alive.
1. Sale, New York, Replica Shoes ’s, 30 January 2019, lot 15
2. A.-M. Logan, ‘Anthony van Dyck: His Early Drawings during the First Antwerp Period,’ in The Young Van Dyck, exh. cat., Madrid, Prado, 2013, pp. 75-91
3. Ibid., p. 79
4. Neuburg an der Donau, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Staatsgalerie, inv. no. 559
5. London, The Royal collects ion, inv. RCIN 405325; The Young Van Dyck, exh. cat., op. cit., cat. 57
6. The Young Van Dyck, exh. cat., op. cit., p. 233
7. For the most recent analysis of this problem, see Anne-Marie Logan, in The Young Van Dyck, exh. cat., op. cit., pp. 77-78
8. Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, inv. V 52; Meij, op. cit., cat. 11
9. Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, inv. MB 341; The Young Van Dyck, exh. cat., op. cit., cat. 53
10. Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, inv. MB 5018, Vey, op. cit., cat. 33; Paris, Fondation Custodia, Frits Lugt collects ion, inv. 1189, Vey, op. cit., cat. 34; Vienna, Albertina, inv. 8633, Vey, op. cit., cat. 36
11. Anne-Marie Logan, in The Young Van Dyck, exh. cat., op. cit., p.81
12. Reported by Vey, loc. cit.