He gloried in his power and worked it to its farthest limit.

Unlike Rembrandt, he never painted beggars; nor did he ever stoop as
Titian did when he pictured his old mother as a peasant woman at market,
in that gem of the Belle d' Arte at Venice; nor did he ever reveal on his
canvas wrinkled, weather-worn old sailors, as did Velasquez.

He pictured only royalty, and managed, in all his portraits, to put a
look of leisure and culture and quiet good-breeding into the face,
whether it was in the original or not. In fact, he fused into every
picture that he painted a goodly modicum of his own spirit. You can
always tell a Van Dyck portrait; there is in the face a self-sufficiency,
a something that speaks of "divine right"--not of arrogance, for
arrogance and assumption reveal a truth which man is trying to hide, and
that is that his position is a new acquirement. Van Dyck's people are all
to the manner born.

He was thirty-three years old when he arrived in England.

King Charles furnished the painter a house at Blackfriars, fronting the
Thames, to insure a good light, and gave him a summer residence in Kent.
All his expenses were paid by the State, and as his tastes were regal the
demands on the public exchequer were not small. His title was, "Principal
Painter in Ordinary to the King and Queen of England."

Van Dyck had worked so long with Rubens that he knew how to use 'prentice
talent. He studied by a system and turned off a prodigious number of
canvases. The expert can at once tell a picture painted by Van Dyck
during his career in England: it lacks the care and finish that was shown
in his earlier years. Yet there is a subtle sweep and strength in it all