when joined with
that of the great master.

ANTHONY VAN DYCK was born at Antwerp in 1599, less than three months
before Velasquez at Seville. Both became so famous in their capacity of
Court painters that the rest of their achievement is popularly regarded
as little more than a bye-product.

In the case of Van Dyck there is the more excuse for the English public,
inasmuch as, like Holbein before him, he was exclusively employed while
in this country in the production of portraits; and as "his works are so
frequent in England," as Horace Walpole observes in the opening sentence
of his memoir in the "Anecdotes of Painting," "that the generality of
our people can scarce avoid thinking him their countryman," it is easy
enough to forget that he only spent the last nine years of his life
here.

Again, the insatiable craze of the English and American public for
portraits has helped to obscure the extent of Van Dyck's capabilities in
other directions, and while the National Gallery contains not a single
subject-piece from his hand, more and more thousands are continually
spent in the acquisition of more and more portraits. The bewitching
_Cupid and Psyche_ in Queen Mary's closet at Hampton Court, painted a
year before his death, is scarcely known to exist!

At the same time it would be useless to deny that Van Dyck's principal
claim to his place among the greatest masters rests chiefly upon
portraiture. The point I wish to make is that portrait painting never
yet made a great master, but that none but a great master ever became a
great portrait painter; and so long as we are only permitted to see the
particular achievement of the artist in our public galleries, so long is
it likely that we shall continue to be flooded with mediocre likenesses
of fashionable people by painters whose highest or whose only
achievement they constitute. Anyone can write a "short story" for the
cheaper sort of modern journal; only writers like Hardy, Stevenson, or
Kipling can give us a masterpiece in little.

It was said that Rubens advised Van Dyck to devote himself to
portraiture out of jealousy: but that is hardly in accordance with what
we know of his generous nature. If the advice was given at all we may be
sure that it was given in a friendly spirit. But there was something in
the temperament of Van Dyck which peculiarly fitted him for the Court,
apart from any question as to his excellence in any particular branch of
his art, and it is