The Duke of Grafton's Van Dyck Coming up For Sale
April 20 2021
Picture: artscouncil.org.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
A reader has alerted me to news that the Duke of Grafton's portrait of Thomas Wentworth by Sir Anthony Van Dyck has been posted on the UK Arts Council Website. It explains that the work is due to be sold at Christie's London on 8th July 2021 carrying a guide price of £5m. The painting has been in the Grafton collection since the late seventeenth century and has been kept at the family's ancestral seat at Euston Hall.
A notice of intention to sell the painting had appeared in 2019 but was pulled before the catalogue was published for reasons unknown.
The painting is an outstanding example of Van Dyck's armoured portraits, showing a great debt to Titian in the painterly execution. The composition recalls Dosso Dossi's Portrait of St William in the Royal Collection, a picture which Van Dyck must have known as it was in King Charles I's collection at the time. Curiously, the Dossi portrait must have been rather special as the Duke of Buckingham was also painted in this guise by Balthasar Gerbier (notice the same fluted armour and helmet).
Update - Amusingly, here's Cromwell in exactly the same composition.
