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, London, UK, 1938; 'Tekeningen van Jan van Eyck toot Rubens', Museum Boymans, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 17 December 1948 - 30 January 1949 (no. 93); 'Van Dyck', Royal Art Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium, July - 24 September 1949; 'De van Eyck à Rubens: Les Maitres Famands du Dessin', Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France 1949; 'Drawings of Old Masters', Royal Academy, 1953 (no. 279);'Le Siècle de Rubens', Musess Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, Belgium, 15 October 1964 - 12 December 1964; 'The Age of Charles I', Tate Gallery, London, UK, 15 November 1972 - 14 January 1973; 'Van Dyck in England', National Portrait Gallery, London, UK, 19 November 1982 - 20 March 1983; 'Master drawings in the Barber Institute', Morton Morris & Co, London, UK, 1986 (no. 11); 'The drawings of Anthony van Dyck', Pierpont Morgan Library and Fort Worth Kimbell Art Museum, 1991 (no.89), p35; 'Art Treasures of England', Royal Academy, London, UK, 22 January 1998 - 13 April 1998; 'The Light of Nature: Landscape Drawings and Watercolours by Van Dyck and his Contemporaries', RubensHuis, Antwerp, Belgium, 15 May 1999 - 20 August 1999; 'The Light of Nature: Landscape Drawings and Watercolours by Van Dyck and his Contemporaries', British Museum, London, UK, 10 September 1999 - 28 November 1999; 'Van Dyck 1599-1641', Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK, 11 September 1999 - 10 December 1999 (no. 70), p91; 'Watercolour', Tate Britain, London, UK, 16 February 2011 - 21 August 2011

1 Related People