Since the days of his own brilliant career, few have disputed the claim that the work of Anthony van Dyck is a touchstone of artistic excellence. The current exhibition at the Royal Academy celebrates the 400th anniversary of his birth and is testament to the high regard in which he continues to be held. But it will be interesting to see the reaction to Van Dyck in London because, despite his status as a prince of painters, he is difficult to enjoy. The most successful recent shows-Monet, Sargent, de Hooch, Vermeer-all allowed an easy point of entry for the non-specialist. Their most striking features-immediate visual charm or glamour, appealing domestic subjects or intrigue -are things we can relate to; we know what to look for. More than that, each plays up to an easily accredited feature of modern self-imagining.
But Van Dyck is more awkward and, I suspect, resistant to modern assimilation. There are two big stumbling blocks to enjoyment of his work. One is the absence of drama, both at the level of theme and of technique. In his best works there is almost nothing going on; there is no story. The second problem concerns the psychology of his portraits-he paints aristocrats and paints them aristocratically. He lived in England from 1632 until his early death in 1641, and enjoyed immense prestige. He was knighted by Charles I and had a successful practice painting the portraits of courtiers; his studio served as an informal salon where they could meet in an atmosphere of cultivated elegance. He presents his sitters as they no doubt loved to see themselves-self-possessed, virtuous and refined; hardly the aspects of character which are thought enticing today.
To those whose education is more literary than visual, looking at pictures in terms of narrative comes easily. Even if we don't go into a gallery bristling with information about the myths, symbols and morals of past times, we find it easy enough to get interested when they are explained to us. The popularity of, say, The Rake's Progress by Hogarth, or the wonderfully detailed canal scenes of Canaletto, is indicative of the satisfaction we take in seeing what is going on in a picture. Current enthusiasm for the pre-Raphaelites draws on a widespread attraction to allegory and symbolism. In Van Dyck we find little of this.
It is a similar story in relation to the paint on canvas. We have been taught to enjoy the texture of paint applied to the grainy surface of canvas-the thick, built-up impasto of Rembrandt, the luminous dabs of Vermeer, the violent strokes of Van Gogh. Impressionism has taught us to attend to the gorgeous broken surface of pictures. Van Dyck offers us little delectation of this kind-his treatment of the picture surface is smooth, his handling of the brush is discreet.
But there is another, less familiar feature of painting at which Van Dyck excels: composition. To examine Van Dyck in this respect, let us look at the double portrait of himself and his friend John Digby, the Earl of Bristol. If we attend to it with composition in mind, we might be struck by the contrast between the broad, straight-on volume of Digby and the more slender, oblique presentation of the artist. The painter's dark cloak contrasts with his pale skin; the Earl's darker-toned complexion is set off by his lighter garments. Analysis in this vein shows us that the picture is an intricate array of volumes, masses, contours and planes.
The viewer's sense of the cohesion and balance of the picture also rests in part upon the psychological intimacy of the two men. Perceived from this point of view, Van Dyck's paintings are wonderfully poised. This achievement, the integration of form and content, is a key-note of the art of painting. Van Dyck has produced a fine presentation of something deep and engaging: the relationship between two men.
If Van Dyck's paintings lack narrative, can we, none the less, overcome the second stumbling block to enjoyment, the idealisation of their subjects? To answer this question, consider Van Dyck's beautiful portrait of the Balbi children (left), now in the National Gallery. It was painted in Genoa, where he lived after his apprenticeship with Rubens. The three boys stand on the steps of a classical portico; they are magnificently dressed. The youngest, in a petticoat, holds a small bird, probably a family emblem. The eldest is already suave and courtier-like; the middle son is martial and forthright and looks with admiration at his older brother. This work is typical of the psychology of Van Dyck's portraits; he does not deal in self-doubt, the evocation of inner complexity, the pathos of existence. The boys are ideals of aristocratic virtue. This is no longer how we like children to be.
The many critics of idealisation argue that such images serve to present the holders of authority and high office (the parents of these paragons, and the boys in later life) as actually possessing the degree of virtue, sincerity, composure and sensitivity with which they are credited in the painting. This "propaganda" serves to deflect attention from a more realistic and unsettling account of their power: that it is arbitrary, maintained by force and unaccountable. This political critique is matched at a more personal level by an anxiety about the role of idealisation in individual lives. Idealisation has come to be seen as an adolescent failing; by contrast, acceptance of the world as it is, and of people as they are, is viewed as a hallmark of maturity.
But idealisation has its place. It functions by selecting an attractive quality and exaggerating it, so that it appears more vividly than it would in nature. We know all too well that the world is not like that; but we engage for a while, perhaps with relief, in a vision of a world, and of human nature, "more beautiful and sweet than ours." We are not misled; we give solace to an aspect of ourselves which is not tough, or cool, or dark, but instead longs for purity, grace and dignity. It is precisely because we know how compromised these qualities usually have to be in order to cope with reality, and because we know how messy human nature really is, that it can be immensely attractive to contemplate an ideal world. We lose out on this if we suppose that we must always be loyal only to the tricky and disturbing features of life, or (in a 1990s version) only to what is fun.
Modern enjoyment of Van Dyck requires cultivation of our instincts for grace and dignity-instincts which tend not to be encouraged in contemporary culture. It is precisely because the work of Van Dyck is not easily assimilated to the self-images of modernity that it makes space for attitudes ill-served today, attitudes which may be, nevertheless, of private importance. One of the cruellest kinds of aesthetic tyranny is the insistence that we must be of our time and only of our time.
But those who remain unmoved by Van Dyck's painting should not feel guilty. We are often encouraged to feel that, if we are interested in art at all, we ought to be interested in all art. But the point about searching out a temperamental affinity with the ambitions of a particular painter puts this catholic hope in question. We are not all temperamentally similar. Not every one yearns for noble elegance. We should embrace this, and recognise that there will be great art to which we are, temperamentally, unsuited to appreciate.
Not surprisingly, compliant, well-behaved creatures that most of us are in the art gallery, we tend to cajole ourselves into the right sort of response to works which are, rightly, presented to us as masterpieces. How many people, who are not really drawn to C?zanne, have wanted to be thrilled and moved by his dry, pared-down images? How many people, who in their hearts really prefer elegance and poise, feel that they must love the distortions and drama of Van Gogh? We should accept the counsel of modesty: that there will be works of great merit to which we will be unable to respond. But we cannot do this with confidence until we have a surer grasp of what our artistic needs are-and that requires that we stop trying to be good in the gallery.
Royal Academy of Arts
11th September-10th December 1999
