Family Portrait, possibly Cornelis de Vos with his wife Susanna and his children Magdalena and Jan-Baptist

As Anthony van Dyck’s biography makes clear, the years between c. 1615 and 1621 are the most difficult to define in terms of his career. Based on nearly contemporary sources from around 1660, he was already active before being accepted as a master in the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp on 11 February 1618. The fact that he signed and monogrammed Portrait of a Seventy-Year-Old Man (Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium) in 1613 suggests that he was painting independently a couple of years before becoming an official member of the guild (Fig. 1).

He was trying to find his own style as becomes evident in the two self-portraits he painted before 1618. In the first Self-Portrait (Vienna, Academy of Fine Arts, c. 1614, Fig. 2), Van Dyck looks over his right shoulder, fixing his gaze on the viewer and suggesting a spontaneous movement. As in the 1613 portrait, the broad brushstrokes are applied with brilliant verve. Despite being only about fifteen years old, he had developed his own technique¹. The second Self-Portrait, datable to around 1615-1616, differs significantly from the first (Antwerp, Rubenshuis)². Although the position of the head is similar, the style in which it is executed is very different. The smooth, sculptural style betrays Rubens’ influence in every detail. It is therefore not surprising that the portrait was previously attributed to Peter Paul Rubens himself³. Although nothing is known about a possible relationship between Van Dyck and Rubens at this time, Van Dyck was aware of Rubens’s dominant position and attempted to emulate his style. It is not an exaggeration to identify Van Dyck as “stylistically bilingual”⁴.

When discussing the Portrait of a Family — possibly depicting Cornelis de Vos and his wife Susanna Cock, and their two eldest children, Magdalena and Jan Baptist — in the context of Van Dyck’s artistic development, it is essential to analyse the portrait from various perspectives. It may be preferable to analyse the portrait without first identifying the subjects. From a scholarly point of view, it is more convincing to avoid accepting the hypothesis that the Family Portrait depicts Cornelis de Vos and his family as a matter of fact, since this would affect the work’s dating a priori⁵.

Firstly, we must establish the position of the Portrait of a Family within Van Dyck’s overall artistic output during his first period in Antwerp (around 1615-1621). Secondly, we need to consider the Portrait of a Family in relation to Van Dyck’s early repertoire of portraits to understand his personal approach to the genre and the position taken by the Family Portrait under discussion. However, we cannot explore either line of enquiry without taking into account the impact of the artistic context of Antwerp, and more specifically Rubens’s pervasive influence on his experimental beginnings. The formal language of Rubens’s history paintings and portraits will constantly provide inspiration. During his first period in Antwerp, before he left for Italy in October 1621, Van Dyck threw himself passionately into his art. He painted over 150 works, 60 of which were portraits⁶. Due to the differences in style, it is difficult to reconstruct the chronological sequence⁷.

The “Portrait of a Family” within Van Dyck’s artistic output during his first Antwerp period (c. 1615-1621).

As said, Rubens functioned as the absolute example especially when Van Dyck was experimenting with complex compositions populated by many figures. One of the earliest paintings by Van Dyck in which this process of influencing is revealed is his Adoration of the Shepherds now in Potsdam (canvas, 155 x 232 cm, Potsdam, Schloss Sanssouci, Neues Palais, Stiftung Preussischer Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg, c. 1616-1617). It is an excellent point of comparison because the composition is centered around a Mother and her Child. It is suspectedly one of the earliest surviving paintings by his hand. The canvas is based on Rubens’s Adoration now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen (canvas, 340 x 248,5 cm), datable c. 1615 and at the same time is connected to several other Adorations painted by Rubens in the same years⁸. However, Rubens’ versions are usually more monumental. By using a horizontal format, van Dyck’s figures are brought closer together, which intensifies the intimacy of the scene. The Virgin is modestly characterised, while St Joseph stands next to her, seemingly protecting his young family by placing his left hand on Mary’s shoulder and pointing to the young mother with his right hand.

When studying Van Dyck’s early portraits a comparable process of imitation and emulation will become evident. Nora De Poorter has given an optimal overview of Van Dyck’s early evolution when it comes to his family portraits⁹. It is, however, imperative to study Van Dyck’s accomplishments in the field of early individual portraits too. The three above mentioned portraits (Figs. 1-2-3) all date from before 1616/1617 and although they reflect the young Van Dyck’s irrepressible talent, his portraits of the following years will be more developed. Friso Lammertse and Alejandro Brown successfully attempted to establish the chronology of Van Dyck’s early portraits by first selecting those for which a date was known, which comes to six paintings, excluding the early one of 1613 (Fig. 1). In 1618, the year in which he became of master, he painted at least two pairs of pendants, a Portrait of a Sixty-Year-Old Man and A Portrait of his Sixty-Year-Old Wife (Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister) and two separate portraits of a couple, respectively Fifty-Seven and Fifty Eight-Year-Old (Vienna, Sammlungen des Fürsten von und zu Liechtenstein). An oval Portrait of a Man bears the date 1619 (Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium) and the Portrait of a Man in Houston is dated 1620 (Houston, The Museum of Fine Arts)¹⁰. All these portraits, dating from 1618, 1619 or 1620, have been painted on panel¹¹. These portraits demonstrate Van Dyck’s artistic development at the beginning of his career, providing the only reference for understanding his early approach to the genre. Although all six portraits are individual, four of them are conceptualised as pairs, referring to a fifteenth-and sixteenth-century Flemish pictorial tradition. According to the heraldic tradition, the husband and wife are posing on the right and left sides, respectively (this means on the left and right from the viewer’s position). They are facing each other and looking explicitly at the viewer. Like the oval portrait of the man in Brussels, the Dresden pendants are bust portraits, while the man and his wife in the Liechtenstein collection are presented at three-quarter length. This set of early portraits is characterised by the contrast between the highlighted faces and the black costumes and background, with the milestone collar acting as a transition between the two parts of the body, stressing the supremacy of the head and the face over the body¹². In the Liechtenstein portraits only, the hands are included to complete the sitter’s individuality. When comparing the Family Portrait under discussion to the early dated portraits by Van Dyck, it remains complex to match it with one out of them. They all share a monochrome palette, with pale, whitish faces surrounded by ruffs standing out against the background. The sitters’ costumes in the 1618 portraits are rendered in detail, as can be seen in the millstone cuffs and the Man’s “fraise à confusion” in the Dresden portrait. Every fold has been stiffened as required, and it is hard to believe that the young, unpolished Van Dyck was disciplined enough to record the mechanical sequences of the folds in such detail. This acute observation and recording is even clearer in the cuffs of the Standing Woman in the Liechtenstein Collection in Vienna, dated 1618. Surprisingly, when looking at the faces, «Van Dyck has a taste for the effects created by dragging the brush in the flesh areas, and from flesh to hair»¹³. These impasto touches are even more evident in the 1619 Bust Portrait of a Man in an Oval Frame, as if he had not had time to finish it. A comparable approach is apparent in the Portrait of a Man dated 1620 in Houston. Although it is painted more thinly, the technique is comparable in its suggestiveness. His face, costume, drapery and the cloudy landscape behind him are all painted with a fluid technique, lacking any sharp contours. Focusing on the hands of the different sitters reveals that, in terms of the incarnate, the 1620 portrait most closely resembles the technique used in the Family Portrait.

Rubens’s early “Portraits of a Family” as a source of inspiration

Having examined some purely stylistic features, it is important to analyse the composition of The Family Portrait, which could still be considered a “novelty” in Antwerp around 1620. Of the approximately 60 portraits that Anthony van Dyck painted during his first Antwerp period, only four depict a married couple, making the “United Family Portrait” a “marginal” iconographical type within his early work. Nor did Rubens love this specific kind of portrait, as is evident from the fact that he only painted three family portraits of this kind, all of which are datable around 1610. These portraits set the standard for Antwerp portraiture of that kind and undoubtedly influenced the young Van Dyck. Rubens Honeysuckle Bower from c. 1609 (canvas, 178 x 136 cm, Munich, Alte Pinakothek), the Portrait of Court Goldsmith Robert Staes, his wife Anna Rindfleisch and their son Albert from c. 1610-1611 (Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle, fig. 3)¹⁴ and The Portrait of Jan Breughel I with his wife Catharina van Marienberghe and their children Elisabeth and Pieter (panel, 124,5 x 94,5 cm, London, Courtauld Gallery) must have been a reference for both artists and clients¹⁵. Nora De Poorter suggested that the young Van Dyck was familiar with Rubens’s Honeysuckle Bower and Portrait of Jan Bruegel I and his Family because the former was in the collection of Jan Brant, Rubens’s father-in-law, in Antwerp, and the latter was probably in the parental home of his close friend, Jan Bruegel II¹⁶. However, there is no reason to assume that he was familiar with the Portrait of Robert Staes and his family, given that it was most likely displayed in the Brussels home of the goldsmith. While Rubens’ full-length marriage portrait does not appear to have been a direct influence, a comparison with the Portrait of the Breughel Family reveals some remarkable similarities. Firstly, the motif of the standing child in profile is similar, and secondly, the posture of the husband bearing a hat and standing on the left behind his wife, protecting his family by resting his hand on the back of her chair, may also have inspired Van Dyck.

The position of the father’s resting hand is barely visible in Rubens’s Family Portrait in London, but the husband’s hand is much more pronounced in the Family Portrait at the Gaudium Magnum Collection. Van Dyck was clearly acquainted with Rubens’ work, although he only adopted some of his compositional approaches, creating a much more intimate and casual atmosphere. With the exception of Elisabeth, the members of Jan Bruegel the Elder’s family are looking at the viewer and posing formally, while the mother and children’s hands come together in an artificial pose at the centre of the composition. In Van Dyck’s interpretation, the young family is presented in a more informal manner, with the father’s protective stance emphasised by his massive right hand, which is positioned around the back of his daughter in a protective manner. The mood of the scene is set by the interaction between the two children. They are portrayed in a very lifelike manner. The eldest child spontaneously touches the baby’s breast and smiles, and the baby leans towards her and extends her little arm in return, smiling joyfully as well. The parents’ expressions are more serious. Contrary to tradition, the wife barely smiles, but looks directly at the viewer, while the husband appears pensive and aware of his responsibilities towards his young family. His slightly bowed head preludes Van Dyck’s portrait of Frans Snijders in the Frick Collection. Like Rubens in the Honeysuckle Bower and Jan Bruegel in the Portrait of his family, he wears a hat with a wide brim. This accessory always contributes to the expression of the face by adding radiance to the head and emphasising the effects of light and shadow. The nearly square format of the canvas is also highly unusual, adding to the unity of the group. The hat’s cut by the frame prompts the question of whether the canvas could have been shortened at the top. Van Dyck’s technique in this portrait could not be more different from Rubens’s: whereas Rubens’s style is sculptural and smooth, Van Dyck’s is loose and experimental.

The Family Portrait is loosely executed, with some parts being almost transparent. It seems that the painter was short on time. It is possible that parts of the original layers have disappeared, and some pentimenti and overpaints are clearly visible. The artist was not interested in rendering details, instead indicating the faces and costumes with broad brushstrokes, alternating with thicker touches in areas such as the hair. Looking at the costume accessories, such as the cuffs, bodice and caps, one gets the impression that they could have remained unfinished, although this may have been the artist’s intention¹⁷. The limited palette is enlivened by colourful accents, such as the baby’s yellow underskirt, the standing girl’s red sash, the woman’s coral bracelet, and the red drapery in the background. As De Poorter established, this family portrait can be compared to Portrait of a Couple in the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts (Fig. 4), as well as to another Portrait of a Couple in the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide (Fig. 5). Even more revealing is a comparison of the portrait in Lisbon with another portrait of a young family (Saint Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum, Fig. 6). The circular composition uniting the family members is almost identical, as is the position of the mother sitting in an armchair with a child on her lap. In this portrait, the man’s collar has also been altered from a millstone ruff to a flat one, presumably to align with changing fashion tastes. De Poorter supposes that this portrait was probably painted around the same time, c. 1620. In my view, however, the styles of the two portraits are different enough to suggest a later date for the Saint Petersburg portrait. Although the girl’s natural pose with the doll is almost identical to the posture of the youngest child in the Lisbon portrait, the styles are very different. The speed of execution and the bold, sketchy brushstrokes evident in the Portrait of the Gaudium Magnum Collection do not characterise the Family Portrait in the Hermitage, the style of which is more controlled and refined. In my view, the aforementioned portrait bears a striking resemblance to the portraits of Snijders and his wife in the Frick Collection, which are also dated by De Poorter around 1620. Based on this, and on earlier comparisons and conjectures, it seems reasonable to date the Family Portrait in the Gaudium Magnum Collection to c. 1619-1620, and to conclude that it was not painted contemporaneously with either the family portrait in Saint Petersburg or the pendants in New York¹⁸.

A possible Portrait of Cornelis de Vos with His Wife Susanna Cock and Their Two Eldest Children Magdalena and Jan-Baptist

In the 2004 critical catalogue of all Van Dyck’s Paintings, De Poorter hypothesised that the family might be that of the Antwerp painter Cornelis de Vos. On the occasion of the auction of the portrait at Sotheby’s London on July 2021, experts replaced the hypothetical character of the identification with a sure identification. When De Vos painted his impressive Self-Portrait with his wife Susanna Cock and their two eldest children Magdalena and Jan-Baptist (Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium), dated 1621, he was clearly inspired by the scheme used by Van Dyck in the Family Portrait in Lisbon, but he adapted it for a monumental composition with four full-length, life-size figures (Fig. 7). Some compositional similarities between the two family portraits prompted De Poorter to compare the physiognomies of the subjects and conclude that «the features of the parents do not contradict this hypothesis»¹⁹. While there are indeed some minor similarities in their physiognomy, in my view they are not sufficient to corroborate the identification. However, chronologically, the identification corresponds perfectly to the ages of the children. In the 1621 family portrait in Brussels, Magdalena (born 1618) and Jan-Baptist (born 1619) are aged three and two, respectively. Assuming that the Lisbon portrait was executed in 1620, as suggested above, this would imply that they should be aged approximately two and one on the portrait. Around 1621, approximately one year after the Lisbon painting was completed, Van Dyck painted the pendant portraits of Frans Snyders and his wife, Margaretha de Vos, the latter being the sister of (New York, The Frick Collection)²⁰. Just a few months before he left for Italy in October 1621, Van Dyck also painted the landscape painter Jan Wildens and his wife Maria Stappaert (canvas, 75 x 58 cm, whereabouts unknown). While the portrait of Wildens has only been partly preserved, the impressive portrait of his wife (canvas, 131.5 x 106.2 cm, The National Gallery, London) highlights Van Dyck’s talent. Jan Wildens was the half-brother of Susanna Cock, the wife of Cornelis de Vos²¹. Evidently, Van Dyck was closely associated with the De Vos family network from at least 1621 onwards. Snijders, Wildens and Paul de Vos were collaborators of Rubens’ by then, and Van Dyck must have met them in his studio. Of all the painters in this group, Cornelis de Vos is the only one about whom nothing is known regarding a direct relationship with Rubens or Van Dyck at that time. In my opinion, it seems improbable that Van Dyck would have chosen to portray Cornelis de Vos and his young family before undertaking the portraits of his closer colleagues. Another argument is of course that Cornelis was an excellent portrait painter himself as becomes evident in his Self-Portrait with his wife and two eldest children in Brussels. Although his own Self-Portrait dates from 1621, it is hard to believe that Cornelis de Vos who was about fifteen years Van Dyck’s senior, would have asked him to paint their portraits a year earlier. It would be even less evident that Van Dyck himself suggested Cornelis to paint a portrait of him and his family²². Furthermore there is a huge difference between Van Dyck’s concept of portraiture and De Vos’s approach. De Vos is the bourgeois portraitist par excellence painting portraits of well to do middle-class Antwerp clients who loved a decorative exposure of their family and/or children. Juxtaposing Van Dyck’s Portrait of Margaretha de Vos with De Vos’s portraits of women, painted around 1622–1624, reveals how De Vos faithfully replicated Van Dyck’s style. If the Van Dyck Family Portrait from the Gaudium Magnum Collection had been in the home of Cornelis de Vos and Susanna Cock, De Vos’s interpretation of the prototype — which De Poorter considers to be the Self-Portrait with his Family in Brussels — would have remained much closer to the original. De Vos’s Portrait of a Lady (panel, 123,5 x 92,4 cm) in The Wallace Collection in London follows Van Dyck’s portrait of his sister Margaretha, in every aspect²³.

While De Vos will go on painting portraits of nuclear families of wealthy citizens until the end of his career, in Van Dyck’s oeuvre family portraits will become rare²⁴. He seldom returned to the scheme he applied during his early years in Antwerp, as in his Family Portrait of Sebastiaen Leerse, his second wife Barbara van den Bogaerde and Johannes Baptista, the youngest of the sons of his first marriage to Elisabeth Bols (Kassel, Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister)²⁵. It is a kind of a reinterpretation of the Portrait of a Couple in Adelaide (Fig. 8). Leerse’s family portrait is an exception to the rule and it can’t be excluded that it was the druggist-almoner himself who suggested to apply a type of portraiture he was familiar with in Antwerp. During his stay in Italy Van Dyck focused on aristocratic sitters who preferred portraits of extended families claiming political power by exposing themselves in the appropriate lineage, as is the case in the huge Portrait of the Lomellini Family (Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland)²⁶. In London, he now and then still painted portraits of noble nuclear families united on one canvas but the elegant sitters are depicted in a much more varied range of poses, expressing emotion and affection more explicitly, and are dressed in shimmering costumes²⁷. Rubens postponed the genre until the moment he applied the schedule including both parents and children for his own family after 1630²⁸.

The Family Portrait in the Gaudium Magnum Collection in Lisbon is a magnificent example of Van Dyck’s natural talent at the beginning of his career. Although inspired by Rubens, he reinterpreted the initial design, inventing a circular dynamic much more intense than that seen in Rubens’ portraits c. 1610. The family members do not join hands as in Rubens’ examples but the hands still play a fundamental role in holding the family together. The father’s right hand shows that he wants to keep the family united, while his wife’s protective left hand intertwines the parents and children in an arc-like shape. The sketchy style and vigorous brushstrokes, which do not focus too much on details and accessories, give the portrait a timeless radiance, ensuring it remains recognisable to a contemporary audience. In early 17th-century Northern European society, family structures evolved from extended families to nuclear families. Portraits reflecting this new social organisation depict wealthy and middle-class Antwerp citizens representing their nuclear families as the cornerstone of society. Irrespective of whether the family depicted can be identified as the family of Cornelis de Vos and his wife Susanna Cock and their two children, this is of little consequence when one considers the unique nature of this portrait as a personal testimony of togetherness and social distinction.