Description:  Van Dyck made this watercolour sketch on his second stay in Britain (1632–41). About thirty of the great portraitist’s landscape drawings survive, including a group of four watercolours of Rye in Sussex; this work too may have been made in the coastal town’s vicinity. Some of the sketches formed the basis of the backgrounds of Van Dyck’s portraits, though not in this case. The rapid execution of the watercolour, with areas left untouched or only roughly worked up, combined with the informality of the composition, suggest that it was made directly from nature.

Notes:  Exhibited: 'Seventeenth Century Art in Europe', Royal Academy, 1938; 'Tekeningen van Jan van Eyck toot Rubens', Museum Boymans, Rotterdam, 1948-9 (no. 93); 'De van Eyck à Rubens: Les Maitres Famands du Dessin', Bibliotheque Nationale, 1949; 'Drawings of Old Masters', Royal Academy, 1953 (no. 279); 'Master drawings in the Barber Institute', London, Morton Morris & Co, 1986 (no. 11); 'The drawings of Anthony van Dyck', Pierpont Morgan Library and Fort Worth Kimbell Art Museum, 1991 (no.89), p35; 'Van Dyck 1599-1641', Koninlijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp and Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1999 (no. 70), p91; 'Watercolour', Tate Britain, 16 February - 21 August 2011.

1 Related People & Organizations