AFTER SIR ANTHONY VAN DYCK | Portrait of Thomas Howard, 14th Earl of Arundel and Earl of Surrey (1586-1646)

Commissioned by Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1609-74), for his gallery at Clarendon House, London;

By descent to his son, Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Clarendon (1638-1709), at Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire; 

Purchased by his brother, Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester (1642-1711), together with Cornbury Park and all its contents, in 1697;

By descent at Cornbury, and later The Grove, Hertfordshire, to his son, Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Rochester and later 4th Earl of Clarendon (1672-1753);

By transfer to his son, Henry, Viscount Cornbury (1710-53) in 1749, who died without issue;

By inheritance to his niece, Lady Charlotte Capel (1721-90), who married Thomas Villiers, 1st Earl of Clarendon of the second creation (1709-86), and transferred to The Grove, Hertfordshire;

Thence by direct descent to the present owner.

G.P. Harding, List of Portraits, Pictures in Various Mansions in the United Kingdom, London 1804, vol. 2, p. 210;

Lady T. Lewis, Lives of the Friends and Contemporaries of Lord Chancellor Clarendon, London 1852, vol. III, pp. 254, and 330-31;

G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, London 1854, vol. II, p. 455;

E. Schaeffer, Van Dyck, des Meisters Gemälde, Stuttgart 1901, p. 369;

M. Hervey, Life, Correspondence and Collections of Thomas Howard Earl of Arundel (“Father of Virtu in England”), Cambridge 1921, p. 353;

O. Millar, Flemish Art, 1300-1700, Royal Academy, exh. cat., London 1953, no. 136;

R.J.B. Walker, Catalogue of Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture and Engraving in the Palace of Westminster, London 1960, vol. II, pp. 3-4;

D. Piper, Catalogue of Seventeenth-Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, London 1963, pp. 15-16;

R. Gibson, Catalogue of the Portraits in the collection of the Earl of Clarendon, privately published 1977, no. 8;

O. Millar et al., Van Dyck. A Complete Catalogue of his paintings, New Haven and London 2004, p. 436 (as a copy).

On long term loan to the Palace of Westminster until 2019. 

Known to history as 'The Collector Earl', Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel was one of the greatest patrons of the arts England has ever produced. Indeed, he is one of the greatest collectors in European history. Despite his prestigious aristocratic lineage, Arundel was born into relative penury, his family having fallen into disgrace during the reign of Elizabeth I due to their religious conservatism and involvement in plots against the crown. The family’s fortunes revived, however, at the ascension of James I and in 1605 he married Lady Alethea Talbot, daughter of Gilbert Talbot, 7th Earl of Shrewsbury and a granddaughter of Bess of Hardwick. Alethea brought with her a vast fortune, including substantial estates in Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, and Derbyshire, but even with these substantial resources at his disposal, Arundel’s collecting and building projects would lead him into heavy debt.

Initially unable to hold political office due to his Roman Catholicism, Arundel embarked on a career as a diplomat and travelled extensively in Europe, establishing a network of contacts with artists, agents and dealers across the continent. As special envoy for the King, he also had access to many of the great courts of Europe, where his appreciation and knowledge of art was nourished. In 1613 he travelled to Italy with Inigo Jones, where, in the Veneto, they encountered together the work of Andrea Palladio, which was to have such a profound effect on Jones' later career, and the Earl collected drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Parmigianino and others (many of which are now in the Royal Collection or at Chatsworth).

As well as Jones, in England Arundel’s circle of scholarly and literary friends included men such as John Evelyn, James Ussher, William Harvey, John Selden and Francis Bacon. He was a major patron of both Rubens and Van Dyck, as well as Daniel Mytens and Jan Lievens, all of whom painted his portrait on a number of occasions; and he collected other paintings by them, as well as works by Holbein, Elsheimer, Honthorst and others. His famous collection of antique sculpture, known as the Arundel Marbles, was the first comprehensive collection of its kind in England, and included some ancient Greek examples that he had excavated himself. Much of the collection was destroyed during the Civil War, but what survived is now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. He also had an important collection of coins and medals, and his library, which included an important collection of manuscripts, was given at the insistence of John Evelyn, to the Royal Society and now forms the Arundel Manuscripts at the British Museum.

Later described by Horace Walpole as ‘the father of virtu in England’, Arundel was always the most serious and dedicated of the virtuosi that made up the Whitehall Group, and contributed significantly to the formation of Charles I’s own Royal Collection. In 1642 he accompanied the King’s eldest daughter, Princess Mary, to the Netherlands for her marriage to William II of Orange. With the political situation fast deteriorating in England and the outbreak of the Civil War imminent, however, he remained on the Continent, settling first in Antwerp and then at a villa near Padua, in Italy, where he died in 1646.

This portrait is a full-length copy of the figure of the Earl of Arundel, from the three-quarter length portrait of him by Van Dyck with his grandson, Thomas, later 5th Duke of Norfolk, at Arundel Castle in the collection of the Duke of Norfolk.¹

1 https://rkd.nl/explore/images/233987