Lord John Stuart and his Brother

Two young men occupy a narrow architectural setting with extraordinary assurance. One rests against a parapet in gold and brown; the other turns towards us through a great sweep of blue and silver. Anthony van Dyck's Lord John Stuart and his Brother, Lord Bernard Stuart , painted about 1638, makes the relationship between these figures as absorbing as their spectacular clothes. Their bodies turn towards one another, yet their eyes lead in different directions. The painting invites us to look closely while preserving the sitters' distance. ^[1]

Two brothers, two ways of standing

John and Bernard were probably about seventeen and eighteen when Van Dyck painted them. They belonged to a large aristocratic family: the youngest of seven sons of the 3rd Duke of Lennox, they were distant cousins of Charles I. Their youth remains visible in their faces, even as the setting and costumes give them a commanding public presence. Bernard would later become Earl of Lichfield. ^[1]

The identification is worth fixing before following the picture's movements. John is the taller figure at the left, dressed in warm gold and brown. His long hair falls towards the pale lace of his collar. Bernard stands slightly in front of him at the right, wearing blue and silver, with a curling mass of hair above a broad white collar. Although Bernard's body faces partly away, his turned head brings his eyes towards the spectator. ^[1]

There is a family resemblance in their pale faces and elaborate dress, but Van Dyck gives each a distinct silhouette. John rises in a relatively continuous line. His elbow extends towards the left edge, and the hand hanging over the parapet introduces a downward movement that echoes the fall of his cloak. His weight seems settled into the architecture. Bernard opens his stance across the lower half of the painting. One boot rests on the raised step, while the other reaches towards the bottom edge. His body describes a sequence of turns rather than a single upright axis.

The brothers' left hands are placed at their hips, creating a repeated gesture within these contrasting arrangements. Repetition makes them belong together; differences in angle and position prevent the pair from becoming symmetrical. Their heads are separated by a broad interval of darkness. Lower down, the fabrics meet and overlap, so that the two figures become a single richly coloured group. The composition alternately separates and joins them as the eye moves from faces to clothes to feet.

Van Dyck also painted their elder brother James Stuart, Duke of Lennox and Richmond . ^[2] The family connection helps explain the social world of this portrait, but the double arrangement gives John and Bernard a particular kind of visibility. Each is presented through his relationship to another young man. Looking at either face soon draws attention to the other figure's posture.

A meeting that never quite happens

John looks beyond the immediate encounter with us. Bernard's glance is more direct, although it reaches the viewer over his shoulder. Neither brother looks at the other. Their bodily proximity therefore produces no simple exchange of attention. The space feels inhabited by two people who are conscious of their appearance, without resolving into a shared action or conversation.

The National Gallery describes the relationship Van Dyck has constructed as tense, noting the contrast between John's leaning pose and Bernard's forward movement. ^[1] That tension can be located in specific features of the painting. Bernard's projecting elbow interrupts the space in front of his torso. His cloak is drawn back so that its bright lining becomes a broad display surface. John remains behind him, supported by the parapet. The two figures offer different degrees of access to their faces and bodies.

Such effects concern the roles they perform in the portrait. They cannot establish a rivalry between the historical brothers, or tell us which was more thoughtful, aggressive or self-confident in daily life. A pose is something an artist can arrange and emphasise. Here, the arrangement gives the viewer an unusually active part: we are caught by Bernard's glance, then directed across the painting towards John, whose attention remains elsewhere.

Bernard's elbow makes the degree of construction particularly clear. The National Gallery observes that his upper left arm emerges awkwardly from the shoulder, as though Van Dyck has privileged the gesture's force over anatomical consistency. ^[1] In the whole composition, the effect is persuasive because the surrounding cloth carries the movement. Bright folds funnel attention towards the pointed elbow, then spill down into the hanging silver lining. The painted garment helps make an exaggerated bodily arrangement feel continuous.

Their elegance depends on this sustained tension between ease and display. John's drooping hand suggests little effort, but the fabric around it is placed for us to see. Bernard's turn has the energy of a momentary movement, yet it exposes a carefully chosen expanse of lining, embroidery and boot. The portrait makes elaborate presentation appear habitual. Its apparent casualness is one of its most thoroughly organised effects.

Gold, blue and the architecture of looking

Colour gives the brothers their clearest separation. John's costume gathers warm ochres, golds and reddish browns around an upright body. Bernard's clothing spreads cool blue and silver into a larger, more irregular shape. The pale lace collars connect their heads to this coloured world, while also giving each face a light boundary against the dark background.

Neither costume reads as a single flat colour. John's gold is broken by pale vertical ornaments, sharp highlights and deep folds. The fabric above his right forearm swells out towards the edge of the picture. Below his waist, the darker breeches make the brilliant upper body seem more concentrated. Bernard's blue changes from deep shadow to bright light along the bent leg. His silver lining occupies the centre of his figure, where its angular folds catch the eye before the blue outer cloak falls towards the right.

These differences make the clothing a means of describing bodies. The shining surface does more than advertise wealth. A light streak marks where a fold turns; an abrupt dark band signals a hollow; a broad silver plane gives an arm or shoulder its apparent volume. The viewer can follow Bernard's twisting posture through the changing direction of reflected light. John's gold sleeve, by contrast, expands outwards and settles into a heavy downward fold beside the stone.

The architecture sharpens these effects. At the left, the parapet and its base give John's position a clear vertical and horizontal framework. Steps cross the lower part of the canvas. At the right, a tall upright strip of stone runs behind Bernard. The setting contains few distracting incidents. Its large planes and subdued colours give the complicated clothes a quiet surface against which to register. ^[1]

Look especially at the lower edge. The diagonal of the step links John's smaller, close-set feet to Bernard's widely spaced boots. Lace, leather, ribbons and a glimpse of red at the soles create a busy sequence near the ground. Bernard's sword descends beside his leg, adding a narrow line to the broader shapes of cloak and boots. His spurs and sword contribute to the assertive presentation identified by the National Gallery. ^[1] These are still portraits in fashionable dress, rather than scenes of military action.

At 237.5 centimetres high, the canvas gives such details a substantial physical presence. ^[1] A small reproduction can make it seem chiefly an exercise in luxurious colour. On its full scale, the relationship to a standing spectator matters too. The projecting elbow, outward boot and turned face address the space in front of the painting. The two brothers occupy a platform from which they can be seen together and approached only on the picture's terms.

Beneath the polished clothes

Technical investigation makes it possible to follow the preparation behind this elaborate appearance. Ashok Roy's study of the painting records a medium-weight, plain-weave canvas covered with one light, biscuit-coloured ground. The ground contains lead white with a relatively small amount of translucent brown earth, probably Cassel earth. This pale preparation lies beneath both the brilliant clothing and the subdued setting. ^[3]

Van Dyck mapped out the figures and their draperies in thin dark paint. Roy describes this brushed underdrawing as extensive and unusually detailed. Some of it can be seen at the surface; infrared photography makes it clearer. Around Bernard, it follows such features as the edges of the blue and silver cloak, the chin, the gloved hand and the boots. The corresponding drawing for John is broader and freer. ^[3]

This evidence gives the portrait's flowing outlines a material history. A loose brush could establish the design before the final colours filled and developed it. The delicate articulation of a glove or a fold did not necessarily begin with a separate, highly finished drawing on paper. In this canvas, substantial planning took place directly in paint. ^[3]

An especially striking feature appears around Bernard's head. Beneath the thin brown background, infrared photography revealed a dark oval area made with charcoal black. Roy interprets it as an early device for locating and framing the head. John has no equivalent dark surround, although the shapes of both brothers' curls were already indicated at the underdrawing stage. ^[3]

The asymmetry is useful to remember when looking at the finished pair. Their faces belong to a unified composition, but the painter did not have to build every part by the same sequence. The dark oval records an early compositional decision. ^[3]

The background received a markedly different degree of elaboration from the clothing. Roy found its greys and browns laid on very thinly, in single layers made from white, earth pigments and black. In the plinth and steps, rapid fluid strokes allow the ground to show through. ^[3] This economical handling gives the architecture enough solidity to support the poses while concentrating attention on the brothers. The contrast between loosely stated stone and richly developed cloth belongs to the making of the painting as well as to its subject.

How painted satin catches the light

Roy's analysis shows that Bernard's blue satin was developed in stages. Indigo provided the shadow modelling, while indigo mixed with white established middle tones. Above these layers, Van Dyck scumbled greenish mineral azurite and mixtures of azurite with indigo. ^[3] A scumble is a comparatively thin, broken application of paint across an existing layer. Here, the layering helps the fabric carry both depth and a shifting surface light.

It is helpful to connect this finding with the blue leg. The contrast between a nearly dark fold and a bright ridge can look effortless at a distance. Analysis reveals a sequence of modelling and surface work behind the effect. The richness comes from relationships between pigments and layers, as well as from the direction and thickness of individual strokes. The scientific account explains something of the structure without reducing the visual result to a colour name.

John's warm costume required another set of combinations. Roy identified pure lead-tin yellow in the brightest yellow highlights. Darker golden browns include yellow ochre, lead white and crystalline red earth pigment, while the deeper, more translucent brown shadows contain reddish ochre, Cassel earth and some yellow ochre. ^[3] Gold fabric is therefore represented through a range of coloured paints. The effect depends on how light and dark are distributed across its folds.

The binding media also vary within this single painting. Raymond White's analysis identified walnut oil in the yellow brocade wrap over John's upper arm and in a white highlight of Bernard's grey silk sleeve. Linseed oil was found in other tested passages, including Bernard's blue cloak. Birch pitch occurred in particular dark or yellow-brown samples, among them the background at the left and the brocade wrap. ^[4]

Those findings belong to the sampled passages. They do not establish one mixture used throughout the costumes, still less a universal formula for Van Dyck's satin. Even within Bernard's clothing, a white highlight and a dark fold produced different results. ^[4] The variation helps explain why the final surface rewards looking at several distances: it combines carefully differentiated materials with a design legible across a room. The wider subject of Van Dyck's preparations, layers and brushwork is explored in Style and Technique .

A possible farewell, and the limits of the date

The National Gallery dates the painting to about 1638. A surviving travel licence offers a possible context for the double portrait. On 30 January 1639 the brothers received permission to travel overseas for up to three years, accompanied by six servants and carrying £100 in cash. The picture may have been commissioned to preserve their appearance before a planned absence. ^[1]

That suggestion is attractive because the pair are presented together at the threshold of adult life. It remains a proposal. The National Gallery states that no further records of their trip have survived and that it is uncertain whether they actually travelled. ^[1] The licence documents permission and an intended journey; it does not establish a departure, an itinerary or three years spent abroad. Nor does it identify who commissioned this canvas or prove that the portrait had a farewell function.

The distinction affects how we read its atmosphere. There is no need to invent an imminent separation to explain the brothers' diverging gazes. Those directions already serve the composition by making the pair look connected without appearing absorbed in one another. If the painting was associated with travel, its substantial scale would have made an impressive remembrance. The visible arrangement, however, can be understood without treating that proposed occasion as certain.

Both brothers later fought for Charles I in the Civil War. John died of his wounds after the battle of Cheriton in 1644; Bernard was killed at Rowton Heath in 1645. ^[1] Knowledge of those short lives changes a modern encounter with their youth and elaborate dress. The picture itself belongs to the years before the war. Van Dyck died in 1641, before either brother's death, and the painting's composed distance cannot be taken as evidence that he anticipated their fate. ^[1]

The painting's later history, and another double portrait

The portrait passed through the Lennox family: the National Gallery traces it through the sister of the last Duke of Richmond and Lennox, who died in 1672, and ultimately to her granddaughter, the 1st Countess of Darnley. It later belonged to the Earls of Darnley, Sir George Donaldson, Sir Ernest Cassel and the Countess Mountbatten of Burma. In April 1988 the National Gallery bought it from Lady Pamela Hicks through a private treaty sale arranged by Sotheby's, with assistance from the American Friends through J. Paul Getty Jnr's endowment. ^[1]

One other National Gallery picture can cause confusion. Portraits of Two Young Englishmen , inventory number NG3605, was formerly identified as John and Bernard Stuart and traditionally considered a work by Van Dyck. The Gallery now catalogues it as Style of Anthony van Dyck ; the sitters are unknown. Its canvas measures 193.7 × 126 centimetres, so it is a separate object with a different attribution and history. ^[2]

The Gallery suggests that the known portrait of John and Bernard may have provided a model for that picture's austere setting, related poses and colour scheme. It also allows that NG3605 could have been painted after Van Dyck's death by a follower, perhaps using a lost original or workshop design. ^[2] These possibilities remain open. They illustrate how readily the language of a successful double portrait could circulate beyond one identified pair of sitters.