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James Stuart, Duke of Lennox and Richmond with his Greyhound by Candlelight

Godefridus Schalcken (Made 1643 – 1706 The Hague)
date
ca. 1692–96
medium
oil on canvas
dimensions
94.6 x 144.8 cm
inventory number
GS-109
Print

Franits, Wayne E. “James Stuart, Duke of Lennox and Richmond with his Greyhound by Candlelight” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 4th ed. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Elizabeth Nogrady with Caroline Van Cauwenberge. New York, 2023–. https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/james-stuart-duke-of-lennox-and-richmond-with-his-greyhound-by-candlelight/ (accessed April 24, 2024).

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Godefridus Schalcken may no longer enjoy the fame of his fellow Dutch artists Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69) and Johannes Vermeer (1632–75), but he surely ranked among the most renowned painters of his own era. By the 1670s the young artist’s star had risen rapidly among cognoscenti as an outstanding specialist in genre painting, and an accomplished portraitist in his hometown of Dordrecht and elsewhere in the Netherlands. Within just a few years, Schalcken’s renown had reached truly international heights, as he enjoyed patronage in France, the Spanish Netherlands, and in various German principalities. During the last 15 years of his life he embarked upon international travels to satisfy the demands of his ever-growing clientele and to augment his status as a renowned artist. Schalcken initiated this enterprise in the late spring of 1692, when he resettled in London, where he would live and work for roughly the next four years.

During the late seventeenth century a sizable number of Dutch (and Flemish) painters relocated to London, one of the largest and most affluent cities in Europe. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 had brought the Dutch stadholder William III and his wife, Mary, to the English throne, with auspicious prospects for persons who made their livelihoods in the creative arts. The couple were very active in refurbishing such royal residences as Hampton Court and Kensington Palace, and in patronizing artists and collecting pictures. Needless to say, members of their extensive court, which naturally included a large Dutch contingent, offered still more possibilities for employment among painters. Cultural conditions, and the economic ones that helped to engender them, thus made England immeasurably attractive to Schalcken and other foreign artists.

Schalcken’s London period (1692–96) was a tremendous success, particularly for his portraiture, which attracted eager clients among the upper echelons of society, including the enormous English court. This stunning nocturnal portrait surely ranks among the most extraordinary works of this period in the artist’s career, for this portrait depicts not a living person but a sitter who had died 37 years before the artist’s arrival in England. Schalcken based his image on a portrait of Stuart that Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641) had painted in the mid-1630s.

Schalcken has depicted James Stuart seated in a darkened interior with his faithful greyhound sitting faithfully beside him (according to tradition, the dog saved his life during a boar hunt on the continent). Stuart was a cousin of King Charles I (1600–49), who had appointed him Gentleman of the Bed Chamber in 1625. In 1633 he was made a Privy Councillor and designated a member of the Order of the Garter. An ardent supporter of the royalist cause during the English Civil War, Stuart and his family made great sacrifices on its behalf. Stuart committed large sums of money to the doomed king’s cause, and his two younger brothers were killed during the conflict.

The greatest artist associated with Charles I’s court, Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641), immortalized Stuart in several memorable portraits. The best known of those pictures, painted ca. 1633–34 in connection with Stuart’s appointment to the Order of the Garter, hangs today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (). Schalcken, however, closely modeled this work upon a ca. 1636 portrait of Stuart by Van Dyck (), which presently belongs to the Iveagh Bequest at Kenwood in London.

Schalcken transformed Van Dyck’s prototype into a night scene, changing the sunset view to the left into a moonscape and, more prominently, adding his signature motif, a glowing candle in a silver candlestick. The lambent highlights on the candlestick glitter like pulsating jewels in the darkness. Indeed, the astonishing execution of this motif and the related light effects are all quintessentially Schalcken. The brilliant candlelight illuminates Stuart’s face, imparting to it a reddish glow. Sections of the painting furthest away from the candle fade into almost monochrome, thereby demonstrating Schalcken’s knowledge of how candlelight diminishes the coloristic intensities of surrounding objects. The mesmerizing appearance of his nocturnal pictures—or night pieces, as they were enthusiastically termed at the time—explains in part the artist’s tremendous success in London as both a portraitist and painter of genre scenes. Apparently, the appeal of light effects of this sort was so strong that the person or persons who commissioned this portrait of James Stuart must have specified that Schalcken transform Van Dyck’s prototype into a nocturne.

This painting raises a number of important questions, among them, where did Schalcken see Van Dyck’s original, and to whom did he sell his own candlelit reinterpretation? Van Dyck’s portrait is listed in an inventory compiled in 1659 of the art collection of Dorothy Percy (ca. 1598–1659), countess of Leicester, stating that she had bequeathed it to her fourth and youngest son, Henry Sidney (1641–1704), 1st Earl of Romney. Since the countess bequeathed this picture and not her husband, Robert Sidney (1595–1677), 2nd Earl of Leicester, who survived her, it is likely that either Van Dyck had painted it for her, or that she had purchased it from its initial owner.

Henry Sidney inherited his family’s country home, Long Itchington in Warwickshire, after his father’s death in 1677, but by that time, the young man had already been living several years on Jermyn Street in London. Presumably, Van Dyck’s portrait could be found at the Jermyn Street residence until 1695, when Sidney moved to no. 16 St. James’s Square. Schalcken must have studied Van Dyck’s canvas at one of these locations. Upon Henry Sidney’s death in 1704 the bulk of his estate, including his art collection, was left to his great-nephew, John Sidney (1680–1737), 6th Earl of Leicester (from 1705). Thereafter, the picture returned to Leicester House (the London home of the earls of Leicester), where the famed English antiquarian George Vertue saw it in 1735.

The precise identity of the person (or persons) who commissioned Schalcken’s portrait of Stuart cannot be determined with any certainty. It would have been impossible for the 1st Duke of Richmond’s direct heir, Esmé Stuart (1649–60) to have commissioned this work since he died in 1660. A more likely candidate is that Henry Sidney did so as a gift to a family member or friend. An inventory made of the art collection at Leicester House in 1743, following the demise of Jocelyn Sidney (1682–1743), the 7th Earl of Leicester and great-nephew of Henry Sidney, lists Van Dyck’s portrait of James Stuart but not Schalcken’s candlelit painting of it. If Henry Sidney had, indeed, ordered Schalcken’s version for his own collection, then it would still have been hanging at Leicester House. Regardless, the painting’s first owner must have harbored a certain nostalgia for pre-Civil War England in general, and for James Stuart, the Duke of Lennox and Richmond, in particular.

- Wayne E. Franits, 2017
Endnotes

  1. Guido Jansen, “Ein Künstlerleben und seine Zeit,” in Schalcken: Gemalte Verführung, ed. Anja Sevcik (Exh. cat. Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum; Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum) (Stuttgart, 2015), 14–35, provides the most recent overview of Schalcken’s life and career.

  2. For this phenomenon, see Sander Karst, “Off to a New Cockaigne: Dutch Migrant Artists in London, 1660–1715,” Simiolus 37 (2013–14): 25–60.

  3. This topic is addressed in, for example, Rieke van Leeuwen, ed., Paintings from England: William III and the Royal Collections (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 1988); Robert P. Maccubbin and Martha Hamilton-Phillips, eds., The Age of William III and Mary II: Power, Politics and Patronage 1688–1702 (Exh. cat. New York, The Grolier Club; Washington D.C., The Folger Shakespeare Library) (Williamsburg, VA., 1988–89), 217–307; Christopher Brown, “Patrons and Collectors of Dutch Painting in Britain during the Reign of William and Mary,” in Art and Patronage in the Caroline Courts: Essays in Honour of Sir Oliver Millar, ed. David Howarth (Cambridge and New York, 1993), 12–31; Hugh Dunthorne, “William III in Contemporary Portraits and Prints,” in Redefining William III: The Impact of the King-Stadholder in International Context, ed. Esther Mijers and David Onnekink (Aldershot, 2007), 263–76; and Koenraad Jonckheere, The Auction of King William’s Paintings 1713 (Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 2008), 17–26, passim.

  4. Anja Sevcik, ed., Schalcken—Gemalte Verführung (Exh. cat. Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum; Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum) (Stuttgart, 2015), 226–28, cat. no. 54. The following biographical information about Stuart was adopted from David L. Smith, “Stuart, James, Fourth Duke of Lennox and First Duke of Richmond (1612–1655),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), accessed online 16 August 2016. See also Julius Bryant, Kenwood: Paintings in the Iveagh Bequest (New Haven, 2003), 51–52.

  5. For Van Dyck’s portrait, see Susan Barnes et al., Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (New Haven, 2004), 584–85, no. IV.200.

  6. Susan Barnes et al., Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (New Haven, 2004), 586, no. IV.201; Julius Bryant, Kenwood: Paintings in the Iveagh Bequest (New Haven, 2003), 50–55, no. 6, where the picture is construed as a portrait historié of Stuart as the doomed mythological hunter, Adonis. This was not the only instance during Schalcken’s London period that he based a painting on a work by a famous artist. He also made a now-lost copy after a Madonna of Raphael for William Sykes (1659–1725), an art dealer who seems to have been acquainted with Schalcken through the Virtuosi of Saint Luke, an informal club consisting of artists and connoisseurs who met regularly in London. This latter picture was lot 200 in A Catalogue of Mr. Sykes’s Extraordinary Collection of Original and Other Pictures (London, 1724); see “The Art World in Britain 1660 to 1735,” accessed online 22 August 2016. For the Virtuosi of Saint Luke, see Ilaria Bignamini, “George Vertue, Art Historian and Art Institutions in London, 1679–1768: A Study of Clubs and Academies,” Walpole Society 54 (1988): 21–44. The earliest years of the club, namely 1689 to 1697, are rather murky, but it would continue until 1743. Thanks to the antiquarian George Vertue’s documentation, it is known that early on there were just 16 members in the Virtuosi of Saint Luke, six of them artists (including Schalcken’s competitors John Closterman and Michael Dahl). Guests were sometimes invited to their gatherings, a practice that would continue throughout the club’s existence. Unfortunately, a perusal of Vertue’s spotty notes concerning the Virtuosi of Saint Luke does not yield Schalcken’s name for the simple but unfortunate reason that his jottings only begin with the year 1697. Schalcken returned to the Dutch Republic in 1696. Be that as it may, connections can be made between Schalcken and two of the club’s leading members, William Sykes and Richard Graham, which suggests his knowledge of and possible involvement in its activities.

  7. Susan Barnes et al., Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (New Haven, 2004), 586. For Henry Sidney, see David Hosford, “Sidney, Henry, First Earl of Romney (1641–1704),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), accessed online on 17 August 2016; Michael G. Brennan, “Henry Sidney (1641–1704), Earl of Romney, and Robert Spencer (1641–1702), Second Earl of Sunderland,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to The Sidneys, 1500–1700, ed. Margaret P. Hannay, Michael G. Brennan, and Mary Ellen Lamb, 2 vols. (Aldershot, 2015), 1: 169–76.

  8. Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, The Early History of Piccadilly, Leicester Square, Soho and Their Neighborhood (Cambridge, 1925), 97.

  9. T. S., “Sidney or Sydney, Henry,” in Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Sidney Lee, 66 vols. (London, 1885–1901), 52:219.

  10. Arthur Collins, Letters of Memorials of State, 2 vols. (London, 1746), 1: 175.

  11. [George Vertue,] “Vertue’s Notebook A. q. [British Museum Add. MS. 23, 071],” Walpole Society 24 (1935–36): 81. That Van Dyck’s portrait had been returned to Leicester House after Henry Sidney’s death is confirmed by the fate of the art collection belonging to the house’s previous two occupants, his older brother, Philip Sidney, 3rd Earl of Leicester (1619–98), and his brother’s son, Robert Sidney, 4th Earl of Leicester (1649–1702). Over the decades Philip Sidney had assembled an enormous collection containing some 2,000 paintings, prints, drawings, and antique statues, which were sold off to clear debts first by his heir Robert Sidney and then by the latter’s heirs upon his own death. Thus, by 1703 Leicester House was almost completed denuded of art. For Philip Sidney’s collection and its dispersal, see Hilary Maddicott, “The Political and Cultural Career of Philip Sidney, Lord Viscount Lisle, Third Earl of Leicester, 1619–1698: Nobility and Identity in the Seventeenth Century” (PhD diss. Birkbeck College, University of London, 2014), 195–203. For Leicester House and its immediate environs, see Walter Thornbury and Edward Walford, Old and New London: A Narrative of Its History, Its People and Its Places, 6 vols. (London, 1887–93), 3: 160–73; Susie West, “Penshurst Place and Leicester House,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to The Sidneys, 1500–1700, ed. Margaret P. Hannay, Michael G. Brennan, and Mary Ellen Lamb, 2 vols. (Aldershot, 2015), 1: 286–89.

  12. Henry Sidney’s nephew (though they were the same age) was Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland (1641–1702), with whom he spent much of his youth; see Michael G. Brennan, “Henry Sidney (1641–1704), Earl of Romney, and Robert Spencer (1641–1702), Second Earl of Sunderland,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to The Sidneys, 1500–1700, ed. Margaret P. Hannay, Michael G. Brennan, and Mary Ellen Lamb, 2 vols. (Aldershot, 2015), 1:169–76. Spencer owned Schalcken’s Boy Blowing on a Firebrand (Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland), which might have inspired the former to commission the picture from Schalcken (or vice versa). The Leiden Collection owns a variant version of Schalcken’s Edinburgh painting; see GS-106.

  13. This inventory is preserved at the Kent History Centre, doc. no. U908/L23/19. It can also be consulted online: “Inventory of Jocelyn Earl of Leicester at Soho Square, 1743,” The Art World in Britain 1660 to 1735 (Kent History Centre U908/L23/19), accessed 15 September 2016.

  14. As the Data Sheet accompanying the entry on this portrait explains, in the Sales Catalogs Database of The Getty Provenance Index, Nicole Cook discovered two listings of late eighteenth-century auctions in Paris that describe a portrait of a sitter at night, in half-length caressing a dog (Paris, 9 December 1788, lot 137; Paris, 14 April 1791, lot 111). However, that sitter is identified as the Duke of Buckingham (presumably the famous 1st Duke of Buckingham). It is certainly possible that the auctioneer misidentified the person portrayed; just such a case of mistaken identity could be reasonably expected in document that post-dates the creation of the painting by nearly 100 years. Still, we must keep in mind that Schalcken made several portraits of members of the English aristocracy by candlelight. One of these, representing the Duke of Grafton is now lost but is known from the inventory compiled by the artist’s principal English patron, Sir John Lowther (1655-1700), 2nd Baronet (and from 1696, 1st Viscount Lonsdale) in 1696: Cumbria Archive Service, inv. no. DLONS/L2/6. Therefore these auction descriptions could actually be describing a now-lost portrait of the Duke of Buckingham.

Iconclass Terms
  • Possibly commissioned from Schalcken by Henry Sidney (1641–1704), 1st Earl of Romney; possibly Anne-Pierre, marquis de Montesquiou-Fézensac (1739–98); (possibly sale, Jean-Baptiste Pierre Lebrun, Paris, 9 December 1788, no. 137, as “le Duc de Bukingham” [for 500 livres to Lebrun]; possibly sale, Jean-Baptiste Pierre Lebrun, Paris, 14 April 1791, no. 111, as “Le portrait du Duc de Buckingham” [for 160 livres to Pierre-Joseph Renoult]).
  • Pablo Bosch (1862–1915), Barcelona, before 1915; by descent to his grandson Eduardo de Salas, Madrid.
  • [Rafael Valls, London, by 2007].
  • From whom acquired by the present owner in 2007.
  • Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, “Schalcken–Gemalte Verführung,” 25 September 2015–24 January 2016; Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum, 21 February–26 June 2016, no. 54 [lent by the present owner].
  • Franits, Wayne. “Porträt des James Stuart, Duke of Lennox and Richmond, mit seinem Windhund bei Kerzenlicht.” In Schalcken – Gemalte Verführung. Edited by Anja K. Sevcik, 226–28, no. 54. Exh. cat. Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum; Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum. Stuttgart, 2015.
  • Franits, Wayne. Godefridus Schalcken: A Dutch Painter in Late Seventeenth-Century London. Amsterdam, 2018, 64–5, fig. 27, 162–3.

The painting was executed on a medium-weight, double weave fabric support. It has been lined, but the tacking margins remain partially intact. The paint extends slightly onto all four tacking margins. The ground appears to be off-white or light gray. Shalcken mostly applied the paint wet-into-wet and he employed glazes in the drapery and shadows. There are small inclusions in the paint.

The painting has suffered a bit of wear. There are numerous small losses around the edges, especially along the bottom. In addition, the paint and glazes have been abraded, particularly in the sitter’s shirt and the drapery. These areas have been carefully inpainted.

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