About this artwork

This is a preparatory study for Van Dyck’s painted Portrait of Nicholas Lanier (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). Lanier was a successful singer, musician and composer, and Master of the King’s Music to Charles I and, after fifteen years in exile, to Charles II. An accomplished painter himself, Lanier assembled one of the first important collections of drawings in Britain. This is one of the earliest studies by Van Dyck in black and white chalk on blue paper, a technique he had encountered in Venice during his Italian period (1621-7) and that is characteristic of studies in his later career.

Updated before 2020

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Sir Anthony van Dyck

Sir Anthony van Dyck