James Stuart, Duke of Lennox andRichmond with his Greyhound by
Candlelight
Godefridus Schalcken(Made 1643 – 1706 The Hague)ca. 1692–96
oil on canvas
94.6 x 144.8 cm
GS-109How to cite
Franits, Wayne E. “James Stuart, Duke of Lennox and Richmond with his Greyhound by Candlelight” (2017).
In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 2nd ed. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017–20. https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/james-stuart-duke-of-lennox-and-richmond-with-his-greyhound-by-candlelight/(archived May 2020).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive ismanaged by a permanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative
occurs.

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Godefridus Schalcken may no longer enjoy the fame of his fellow Dutch

Comparative Figuresartists Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69) and Johannes Vermeer (1632–75), but
he surely ranked among the most renowned painters of his own era. By the1670s the young artist’s star had risen rapidly among cognoscenti as an
outstanding specialist in genre painting, and an accomplished portraitist in
his hometown of Dordrecht and elsewhere in the Netherlands.[1] Within just a
few years, Schalcken’s renown had reached truly international heights, as
he enjoyed patronage in France, the Spanish Netherlands, and in various
German principalities. During the last 15 years of his life he embarked uponinternational travels to satisfy the demands of his ever-growing clientele andto augment his status as a renowned artist. Schalcken initiated thisenterprise in the late spring of 1692, when he resettled in London, where hewould live and work for roughly the next four years.
During the late seventeenth century a sizable number of Dutch (and Flemish)
painters relocated to London, one of the largest and most affluent cities in
Europe.[2] The Glorious Revolution of 1688 had brought the Dutch stadholder
William III and his wife, Mary, to the English throne, with auspicious
prospects for persons who made their livelihoods in the creative arts. The

Fig 1. Anthony van Dyck, James
Stuart, Duke of Richmond andLennox, ca. 1633–35, oil oncanvas, 215.9 x 127.6 cm, New
York, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Marquand Collection, Gift of Henry
G. Marquand, 1889, 89.15.16

couple were very active in refurbishing such royal residences as Hampton
Court and Kensington Palace, and in patronizing artists and collecting
pictures.[3] Needless to say, members of their extensive court, which
naturally included a large Dutch contingent, offered still more possibilities for
employment among painters. Cultural conditions, and the economic ones
that helped to engender them, thus made England immeasurably attractive
to Schalcken and other foreign artists.
Schalcken’s London period (1692–96) was a tremendous success,particularly for his portraiture, which attracted eager clients among the upper

Fig 2. Anthony van Dyck, James
Stuart, Duke of Lennox andRichmond, ca. 1636 oil on canvas
99.7 x 160 cm Kenwood, Iveagh
Bequest, London, © Historic
England Archiveechelons of society, including the enormous English court. This stunningnocturnal portrait surely ranks among the most extraordinary works of thisperiod in the artist’s career, for this portrait depicts not a living person but asitter who had died 37 years before the artist’s arrival in England. Schalcken
based his image on a portrait of Stuart that Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
had painted in the mid-1630s.[4]Schalcken has depicted James Stuart seated in a darkened interior with his
faithful greyhound sitting faithfully beside him (according to tradition, the dog
saved his life during a boar hunt on the continent). Stuart was a cousin ofKing Charles I (1600–49), who had appointed him Gentleman of the Bed© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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Chamber in 1625. In 1633 he was made a Privy Councillor and designated amember of the Order of the Garter. An ardent supporter of the royalist cause
during the English Civil War, Stuart and his family made great sacrifices on
its behalf. Stuart committed large sums of money to the doomed king’s
cause, and his two younger brothers were killed during the conflict.
The greatest artist associated with Charles I’s court, Anthony van Dyck
(1599–1641), immortalized Stuart in several memorable portraits. The best
known of those pictures, painted ca. 1633–34 in connection with Stuart’s
appointment to the Order of the Garter, hangs today in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York (fig 1).[5] Schalcken, however, closely modeled
this work upon a ca. 1636 portrait of Stuart by Van Dyck (fig 2), which
presently belongs to the Iveagh Bequest at Kenwood in London.[6]Schalcken transformed Van Dyck’s prototype into a night scene, changing
the sunset view to the left into a moonscape and, more prominently, adding
his signature motif, a glowing candle in a silver candlestick. The lambent
highlights on the candlestick glitter like pulsating jewels in the darkness.
Indeed, the astonishing execution of this motif and the related light effects
are all quintessentially Schalcken. The brilliant candlelight illuminates
Stuart’s face, imparting to it a reddish glow. Sections of the painting furthest
away from the candle fade into almost monochrome, thereby demonstrating
Schalcken’s knowledge of how candlelight diminishes the coloristic
intensities of surrounding objects. The mesmerizing appearance of his
nocturnal pictures—or night pieces, as they were enthusiastically termed at
the time—explains in part the artist’s tremendous success in London as botha portraitist and painter of genre scenes. Apparently, the appeal of lighteffects of this sort was so strong that the person or persons who
commissioned this portrait of James Stuart must have specified that
Schalcken transform Van Dyck’s prototype into a nocturne.
This painting raises a number of important questions, among them, where
did Schalcken see Van Dyck’s original, and to whom did he sell his own
candlelit reinterpretation? Van Dyck’s portrait is listed in an inventory
compiled in 1659 of the art collection of Dorothy Percy (ca. 1598–1659),
countess of Leicester, stating that she had bequeathed it to her fourth andyoungest son, Henry Sidney (1641–1704), 1st Earl of Romney.[7] Since thecountess bequeathed this picture and not her husband, Robert Sidney(1595–1677), 2nd Earl of Leicester, who survived her, it is likely that either
Van Dyck had painted it for her, or that she had purchased it from its initialowner.
© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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Henry Sidney inherited his family’s country home, Long Itchington in
Warwickshire, after his father’s death in 1677, but by that time, the young
man had already been living several years on Jermyn Street in
London.[8] Presumably, Van Dyck’s portrait could be found at the Jermyn
Street residence until 1695, when Sidney moved to no. 16 St. James’s
Square.[9] Schalcken must have studied Van Dyck’s canvas at one of theselocations. Upon Henry Sidney’s death in 1704 the bulk of his estate,including his art collection, was left to his great-nephew, John Sidney(1680–1737), 6th Earl of Leicester (from 1705).[10] Thereafter, the picture
returned to Leicester House (the London home of the earls of Leicester),where the famed English antiquarian George Vertue saw it in 1735.[11]The precise identity of the person (or persons) who commissioned
Schalcken’s portrait of Stuart cannot be determined with any certainty. It
would have been impossible for the 1st Duke of Richmond’s direct heir,
Esmé Stuart (1649–60) to have commissioned this work since he died in
1660. A more likely candidate is that Henry Sidney did so as a gift to a family
member or friend.[12] An inventory made of the art collection at Leicester
House in 1743, following the demise of Jocelyn Sidney (1682–1743), the
7th Earl of Leicester and great-nephew of Henry Sidney, lists Van Dyck’s
portrait of James Stuart but not Schalcken’s candlelit painting of it.[13] If Henry
Sidney had, indeed, ordered Schalcken’s version for his own collection, thenit would still have been hanging at Leicester House. Regardless, thepainting’s first owner must have harbored a certain nostalgia for pre-Civil
War England in general, and for James Stuart, the Duke of Lennox andRichmond, in particular.[14]- Wayne E. Franits, 2017

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Endnotes

1. Guido Jansen, “Ein Künstlerleben und seine Zeit,” in Schalcken: Gemalte Verführung, ed.
Anja Sevcik (Exh. cat. Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum; Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum)(Stuttgart, 2015), 14–35, provides the most recent overview of Schalcken’s life and career.
2. For this phenomenon, see Sander Karst, “Off to a New Cockaigne: Dutch Migrant Artists in
London, 1660–1715,” Simiolus 37 (2013–14): 25–60.
3. This topic is addressed in, for example, Rieke van Leeuwen, ed., Paintings from England:
William III and the Royal Collections (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 1988);
Robert P. Maccubbin and Martha Hamilton-Phillips, eds., The Age of William III and Mary II:
Power, Politics and Patronage 1688–1702 (Exh. cat. New York, The Grolier Club;
Washington D.C., The Folger Shakespeare Library) (Williamsburg, VA., 1988–89), 217–307;
Christopher Brown, “Patrons and Collectors of Dutch Painting in Britain during the Reign ofWilliam and Mary,” in Art and Patronage in the Caroline Courts: Essays in Honour of Sir
Oliver Millar, ed. David Howarth (Cambridge and New York, 1993), 12–31; Hugh Dunthorne,“William III in Contemporary Portraits and Prints,” in Redefining William III: The Impact of theKing-Stadholder in International Context, ed. Esther Mijers and David Onnekink (Aldershot,2007),

263–76;

andKoenraad

Jonckheere,

The

AuctionofKing

William’s

Paintings 1713 (Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 2008), 17–26, passim.
4. Anja Sevcik, ed., Schalcken—Gemalte Verführung (Exh. cat. Cologne, Wallraf-RichartzMuseum; Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum) (Stuttgart, 2015), 226–28, cat. no. 54. The
following biographical information about Stuart was adopted from David L. Smith, “Stuart,
James, Fourth Duke of Lennox and First Duke of Richmond (1612–1655),” in Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography (2004), accessed online 16 August 2016. See also Julius
Bryant, Kenwood: Paintings in the Iveagh Bequest (New Haven, 2003), 51–52.
5. For Van Dyck’s portrait, see Susan Barnes et al., Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the
Paintings (New Haven, 2004), 584–85, no. IV.200.
6. Susan Barnes et al., Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (New Haven, 2004),
586, no. IV.201; Julius Bryant, Kenwood: Paintings in the Iveagh Bequest (New Haven,2003), 50–55, no. 6, where the picture is construed as a portrait historié of Stuart as thedoomed mythological hunter, Adonis. This was not the only instance during Schalcken’s
London period that he based a painting on a work by a famous artist. He also made a nowlost copy after a Madonna of Raphael for William Sykes (1659–1725), an art dealer who
seems to have been acquainted with Schalcken through the Virtuosi of Saint Luke, aninformal club consisting of artists and connoisseurs who met regularly in London. This latter
picture was lot 200 in A Catalogue of Mr. Sykes’s Extraordinary Collection of Original andOther Pictures (London, 1724); see “The Art World in Britain 1660 to 1735,” accessed online© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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22 August 2016. For the Virtuosi of Saint Luke, see Ilaria Bignamini, “George Vertue, Art
Historian and Art Institutions in London, 1679–1768: A Study of Clubs and Academies,”
Walpole Society 54 (1988): 21–44. The earliest years of the club, namely 1689 to 1697, arerather murky, but it would continue until 1743. Thanks to the antiquarian George Vertue’s
documentation, it is known that early on there were just 16 members in the Virtuosi ofSaint Luke, six of them artists (including Schalcken’s competitors John Closterman andMichael Dahl). Guests were sometimes invited to their gatherings, a practice that would
continue throughout the club’s existence. Unfortunately, a perusal of Vertue’s spotty notes
concerning the Virtuosi of Saint Luke does not yield Schalcken’s name for the simple but
unfortunate reason that his jottings only begin with the year 1697. Schalcken returned to the
Dutch Republic in 1696. Be that as it may, connections can be made between Schalcken andtwo of the club’s leading members, William Sykes and Richard Graham, which suggests his
knowledge of and possible involvement in its activities.
7. Susan Barnes et al., Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (New Haven, 2004),
586. For Henry Sidney, see David Hosford, “Sidney, Henry, First Earl of Romney(1641–1704),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), accessed online on 17 August
2016; Michael G. Brennan, “Henry Sidney (1641–1704), Earl of Romney, and Robert
Spencer (1641–1702), Second Earl of Sunderland,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to
The Sidneys, 1500–1700, ed. Margaret P. Hannay, Michael G. Brennan, and Mary Ellen
Lamb, 2 vols. (Aldershot, 2015), 1: 169–76.
8. Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, The Early History of Piccadilly, Leicester Square, Soho and
Their Neighborhood (Cambridge, 1925), 97.
9. T. S., “Sidney or Sydney, Henry,” in Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Sidney Lee, 66
vols. (London, 1885–1901), 52:219.
10. Arthur Collins, Letters of Memorials of State, 2 vols. (London, 1746), 1: 175.
11. [George Vertue,] “Vertue’s Notebook A. q. [British Museum Add. MS. 23, 071],” Walpole
Society 24 (1935–36): 81. That Van Dyck’s portrait had been returned to Leicester House
after Henry Sidney’s death is confirmed by the fate of the art collection belonging to thehouse’s previous two occupants, his older brother, Philip Sidney, 3rd Earl of Leicester(1619–98), and his brother’s son, Robert Sidney, 4th Earl of Leicester (1649–1702). Over the
decades Philip Sidney had assembled an enormous collection containing some 2,000
paintings, prints, drawings, and antique statues, which were sold off to clear debts first by hisheir Robert Sidney and then by the latter’s heirs upon his own death. Thus, by 1703
Leicester House was almost completed denuded of art. For Philip Sidney’s collection and its
dispersal, see Hilary Maddicott, “The Political and Cultural Career of Philip Sidney, Lord
Viscount Lisle, Third Earl of Leicester, 1619–1698: Nobility and Identity in the SeventeenthCentury” (PhD diss. Birkbeck College, University of London, 2014), 195–203. For Leicester
House and its immediate environs, see Walter Thornbury and Edward Walford, Old and New© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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London: A Narrative of Its History, Its People and Its Places, 6 vols. (London, 1887–93), 3:
160–73; Susie West, “Penshurst Place and Leicester House,” in The Ashgate ResearchCompanion to The Sidneys, 1500–1700, ed. Margaret P. Hannay, Michael G. Brennan, andMary Ellen Lamb, 2 vols. (Aldershot, 2015), 1: 286–89.
12. Henry Sidney’s nephew (though they were the same age) was Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl ofSunderland (1641–1702), with whom he spent much of his youth; see Michael G. Brennan,“Henry Sidney (1641–1704), Earl of Romney, and Robert Spencer (1641–1702), Second Earlof Sunderland,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to The Sidneys, 1500–1700, ed.
Margaret P. Hannay, Michael G. Brennan, and Mary Ellen Lamb, 2 vols. (Aldershot, 2015),
1:169–76. Spencer owned Schalcken’s Boy Blowing on a Firebrand (Edinburgh, National
Gallery of Scotland), which might have inspired the former to commission the picture from
Schalcken (or vice versa). The Leiden Collection owns a variant version of Schalcken’s
Edinburgh painting; see GS-106.
13. This inventory is preserved at the Kent History Centre, doc. no. U908/L23/19. It can also be
consulted online: “Inventory of Jocelyn Earl of Leicester at Soho Square, 1743,” The Art
World in Britain 1660 to 1735 (Kent History Centre U908/L23/19), accessed 15 September
2016.
14. As the Data Sheet accompanying the entry on this portrait explains, in the Sales Catalogs
Database of The Getty Provenance Index, Nicole Cook discovered two listings of lateeighteenth-century auctions in Paris that describe a portrait of a sitter at night, in half-length
caressing a dog (Paris, 9 December 1788, lot 137; Paris, 14 April 1791, lot 111). However,that sitter is identified as the Duke of Buckingham (presumably the famous 1st Duke of
Buckingham). It is certainly possible that the auctioneer misidentified the person portrayed;just such a case of mistaken identity could be reasonably expected in document that postdates the creation of the painting by nearly 100 years. Still, we must keep in mind that
Schalcken made several portraits of members of the English aristocracy by candlelight. Oneof these, representing the Duke of Grafton is now lost but is known from the inventory
compiled by the artist’s principal English patron, Sir John Lowther (1655-1700), 2nd Baronet(and from 1696, 1st Viscount Lonsdale) in 1696: Cumbria Archive Service, inv. no.
DLONS/L2/6. Therefore these auction descriptions could actually be describing a now-lost
portrait of the Duke of Buckingham.

ProvenancePossibly commissioned from Schalcken by Henry Sidney (1641–1704), 1st Earl of Romney;possibly Anne-Pierre, marquis de Montesquiou-Fézensac (1739–98); (possibly sale, JeanBaptiste Pierre Lebrun, Paris, 9 December 1788, no. 137, as “le Duc de Bukingham” [for 500© 2020 The Leiden Collection

James Stuart, Duke of Lennox and Richmond with his Greyhound by
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Page 8 of 9livres to Lebrun]; possibly sale, Jean-Baptiste Pierre Lebrun, Paris, 14 April 1791, no. 111, as“Le portrait du Duc de Buckingham” [for 160 livres to Pierre-Joseph Renoult]).
Pablo Bosch (1862–1915), Barcelona, before 1915; by descent to his grandson Eduardo deSalas, Madrid.
[Rafael Valls, London, by 2007].
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2007.

Exhibition History
Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, “Schalcken–Gemalte Verführung,” 25 September
2015–24 January 2016; Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum, 21 February–26 June 2016, no. 54[lent by the present owner].

References
Franits, Wayne. “Porträt des James Stuart, Duke of Lennox and Richmond, mit seinem
Windhund bei Kerzenlicht.” In Schalcken – Gemalte Verführung. Edited by Anja K. Sevcik,
226–28, no. 54. Exh. cat. Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum; Dordrecht, Dordrechts
Museum. Stuttgart, 2015.
Franits, Wayne. Godefridus Schalcken: A Dutch Painter in Late Seventeenth-Century
London. Amsterdam, 2018, 64–5, fig. 27, 162–3.

Technical Summary
The painting was executed on a medium-weight, double weave fabric support. It has been lined,
but the tacking margins remain partially intact. The paint extends slightly onto all four tacking
margins. The ground appears to be off-white or light gray. Shalcken mostly applied the paint wetinto-wet and he employed glazes in the drapery and shadows. There are small inclusions in thepaint.
The painting has suffered a bit of wear. There are numerous small losses around the edges,
especially along the bottom. In addition, the paint and glazes have been abraded, particularly inthe sitter’s shirt and the drapery. These areas have been carefully inpainted.

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