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.