Anthony van Dyck as an Etcher in the Fitzwilliam Museum

Fitzwilliam Museum,  Exhibition Changing faces: Anthony Van Dyck as an etcher
Tue 17 February 2009 to Sun 17 May 2009

This exhibition will display the Museum’s collection of exceedingly beautiful portrait etchings by Anthony Van Dyck, executed probably before his departure to London in 1632. The portraits are nearly all of Flemish artists of Van Dyck’s generation or the preceding one, portrayed by Van Dyck as dignified and learned men, rather than ordinary craftsman. Although few in number they are among the most striking examples of the etching technique. Under Van Dyck’s direction and also after his death, other printmakers built up the compositions with engraved lines. Visitors can witness the development of the portraits by viewing impressions of the pure etchings next to later states.
To complement this exhibition drawings by Van Dyck, Joos de Momper, Jan Breughel the Elder and Frans Snyders will be on display in the Dutch Gallery (15) from the middle of February.

Van Dyck and Britain (Tate Britain)
18 February  –  17 May 2009

Anthony Van Dyck Portrait of Mary Hill, Lady Killigrew 1638 Tate

LONDON.-Tate Britain has announced it will present Van Dyck and Britain, 18 February – 17 May. Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) was the greatest painter in seventeenth-century Britain. Van Dyck and Britain will reveal the Flemish artist’s unique impact on British cultural life, from the reign of Charles I onwards. This visually sumptuous exhibition will bring together some of the finest and most magnificent paintings that van Dyck produced during his years in Britain. It will also demonstrate his continuing visual legacy through portraits by artists from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, including Sir Joshua Reynolds and John Singer Sargent. Van Dyck was born and trained in the major art centre of Antwerp. He made a brief initial visit to London in 1620-21 before returning in 1632 to become the outstanding painter at the art-enthusiastic court of King Charles

Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) was the greatest painter in seventeenth-century Britain. Though trained in Flanders, he had a huge impact on British cultural life as the principal painter at King Charles I’s ostensibly elegant court, where his impact was similar to that of Hans Holbein at the court of Henry VIII.