(Antwerp 1599–1641 London)
Portrait of James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby, ‘The Great Earl of Derby’ (1607–1651), half-length,
oil on canvas, 77 x 64 cm, framed

*Pupil means: a work created by an unknown student of the artist

Provenance:
sale, Christie’s, London, 6 April 1956, lot 12 (as attributed to Anthony van Dyck);
Private collection, Belgium

The present portrait of James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby, is a unique portrayal of a key Royalist commander of Charles I’s forces during the English Civil War. Traditionally attributed to Anthony van Dyck, as recorded in engravings (such as that John Henry Robinson (1796–1871) conserved in the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh), and as offered at sale (Christie’s, London, 6th April 1956, lot 12: ‘Van Dyck, Portrait of James Stanley, Earl of Derby, in armour and small white collar, wearing the Order of the Garter’), current scholarship holds the portrait to be the hand of a gifted collaborator from van Dyck’s Blackfriars workshop. The stylistic confluence between elements of the present picture and the known works of van Dyck’s leading assistants, such as Jan van Belcamp (1610–1663), Remigius van Leemput (1607–1675), Georg Geldorp (1595–1665) and Peter Lely (1618–1680), remains an intriguing and open art historical question.

The likeness of Stanley in the present picture derives from van Dyck’s circa 1636 work James Stanley, Lord Strange, Later Seventh Earl of Derby, with His Wife, Charlotte, and Their Daughter, in The Frick Collection, New York. A similar version of the present picture is conserved in the Derby collection, Knowsley Hall, Merseyside, and another, related, portrayal of the Earl, also in armour, by an unknown hand but similarly deriving from van Dyck’s Frick portrayal is in the collection of the Government of the Isle of Man, where the Earl of Derby served as Governor.

Known as ‘The Martyr Earl,’ Derby was beheaded in Bolton by Parliamentary forces for atrocities committed by the Earl and his troops there. The present picture is thus likely a posthumous portrayal, commissioned also after van Dyck’s death, from one of the aforementioned leading lights of his studio by the Earl’s immediate descendants.