Smith, John: A catalogue raisonné of the works of the most eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French painters: in which is included a short biographical notice of the artists, with a copious description of their principal pictures : a statement of the prices at which such pictures have been sold at public sales on the continent and in England; a reference the the galleries and private collections in which a large portion are at present; and the names of the artists by whom they have been engraved; to which is added, a brief notice of the scholars & imitators of the great masters of the above schools (Part 3) (London: Smith and Son, 1831)

LIFE OF VAN DYCK.

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adapted to pourtray persons of every class and character,
which is not the case with the severe and solemn style
of Titian.
To those who have not attentively considered the
works of Van Dyck, it may be useful to observe, that
those pictures which he painted in Italy have more
of the Venetian colouring than those of a subsequent
period: such are the portraits of a Genoese Senator
and his lady, in the collection of the Right Hon. Sir
Robert Peel; John Count of Nassau, in the collection
of Alexander Baring, Esq.; and others, already enu-
merated.
Soon after his return to Antwerp he incorporated
more of the Flemish mode of colouring into his pictures,
perhaps in deference to the taste of his countrymen :
amongst the numerous examples of this class may be
adduced the portraits of the Chevalier Roy and his lady,
now in the Prince of Orange’s Palace at Brussels;
Jacob le Roy, in the possession of Lord Brownlow ; the
Duke of Nassau and family, in the collection of Earl
Cowper; and the Gevartius in the National Gallery.
The same delightful colouring glows in his early pro-
ductions in this country ; but, in proportion as his sitters
augmented, his pictures became slighter or less finished;
and many of them were done with such dispatch that
little more than a day sufficed to begin and complete a
portrait : for it is asserted, that he frequently kept his
sitter to dinner, and, by working afterwards, finished it
the same day. By these means, and the aid of assistants
and pupils, he executed an incredible number of pictures,
many of which are painted in a very slight and negli-