Sir Anthony van Dyck Antwerp 1599 - 1641 London

Cambridge, Massachusetts, Fogg Museum, Rubens and Van Dyck Sketches, October, 1941;
Zanesville, Ohio, Art Institute, Catalogue, 1942, no. 45.

F.S. Berryman, "News and Comments", Magazine of Art, vol. 35, 1942, pp. 227, 230;
Horst Vey, 'Anton Van Dycks Ölskizzen', Bulletin des Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, vol. 5, 1956, p. 186;
Eric Larsen, Van Dyck, Freren 1988, no. 689, reproduced p. 473;
Susan J. Barnes, Nora de Poorter, Oliver Millar and Horst Vey, Van Dyck. A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, New Haven and London 2004, p. 250, no. III.5.

Painted circa 1627-8, this oil sketch is remarkable not only for its execution but also its size, being considerably larger than Van Dyck's other oil sketches of this second Antwerp period.  Although almost monochromatic, The Adoration of the Shepherds brings the young Van Dyck's extraordinary pictorial talents into sharp focus.

It is in these rare oil sketches that we most vividly experience the technical and humanistic dimensions of Van Dyck's art. Using a monochromatic grisaille technique and thinly applied paint, Van Dyck rapidly sketched in his composition, eagerly exploring the effect of light and shadow on the figures in this adoration scene. This sketch combines the freshness, immediacy, and fluency of a drawing with the monumentality of a large painting.

Van Dyck inspired by his teacher Sir Peter Paul Rubens made oil sketches for a variety of purposes—to work out the basic elements of an idea and composition, to study specific anatomical details and differentiate subtle physical gestures, to serve as a model or precise maquette for a large painting or altarpiece or, on a few occasions, as a template from which an engraving was to be made.  No commission or finished painting of this composition is known although the suggestion has been made that it is plausible Van Dyck painted this oil sketch in preparation for an altarpiece that was probably never completed or is now lost (see Vey Literature below).

Both Rubens and Van Dyck used the medium of oil sketch the way many of their predecessors and contemporaries used the medium of the drawing.  Van Dyck, like Rubens, drew color and form directly in oils on small wooden panels. It is these intimate and enticing works, which the artists themselves prized and collectors too have always coveted.  Unlike the large commissioned works that often involved studio collaborators, in the oil sketches we encounter Van Dyck's hand alone. Here we find the direct expression of his intent and his thinking.

This second Antwerp period after Van Dyck's return from Italy saw the artist take on a  large number of new commissions.  Van Dyck is often described during this period as displaying a "positively inhuman appetite for work" and an "immense versatility" (see Vey Literature below) .  During this period Vey notes that "Van Dyck's figures become more slender and delicate and that their expansive gestures creating an emotive rhetoric of a new, subtle, elegaic kind, which dominates the visual plane.  The compositions are more angular; for all their emotive expressivness, they are shallow, relief-like, clear and simple; they fit into a precise system".  Van Dyck had only just returned from Italy and was steeped in the imagery of Titian, Veronese and other Venetian masters.  Vey notes, "The composition with its spirited figures aginst a towering architectural setting, is full of Italian elements: works by Titian and Veronese immediately come to mind."  Equally evident in the sketch are the strong Flemish traits and the influence of Rubens.  The sketch also shares close affinities to the large, rhetorical paintings painted by Van Dyck shortly after his return from Italy for his ecclesiastical clients.

Van Dyck treated the subject of the Adoration on several occasions after his return to Antwerp.   The majestic appearance of Mary and the dominant position of Joseph are motifs he explored in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk, Dendermonde.  The renewed theological importance of Mary and Joseph reveal Van Dyck's respect for the Counter Reformation tenets being preached in Antwerp.