20

Mar

William II, Prince of Orange, married Mary Henrietta, the daughter of Charles I of England, on May 2, 1641 at the Chapel Royal of Whitehall. He was not quite sixteen, she was nine and a half. The painting was possibly done before the marriage, earlier in the year.

This was one of the last pictures Anthony van Dyck painted, maybe even the last. In January, or in summer, of that year, he traveled to Paris, where he fell seriously ill. In November, he returned hurriedly to London, where he died soon after in his house at Blackfriars. He was forty-two years old.

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Paintings

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06

Feb

Peter Paul Rubens: Self-portrait with his wife Isabella (c. 1609)

Rubens married Isabella Brant, the daughter of an important city official in Antwerp, in October 1609. He was thirty-two, had returned from his long trip to Italy half a year earlier and had just been appointed court painter by Albert VII, Archduke of Austria, sovereign of the Low Countries, with special permission to base his studio in Antwerp instead of at the court in Brussels, and to also work for other clients. She was eighteen. In this life-size double portrait now in the Alte Pinakothek, often known simply as The Honeysuckle Bower, he celebrated his new marriage.

Isabella sat for several portraits by her husband and his student Anthony van Dyck before she died of the bubonic plague, not yet thirty-five.

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Paintings/Portraits

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04

Jan

Carolus-Duran: Le baiser (1868)

Married life has never been much of a topic in European art, literature, or drama. Ever since Menander, comedy traditionally deals with a pair of lovers who have to overcome some obstacles to be allowed to marry, but the comedy is over as soon as these obstacles are overcome. Novels, too, tend to end with marriage rather than begin with it, this is true for romance novels as well as Picaresques like Tom Jones. A small subset of romance novels, of which The Scarlet Pimpernel is probably the most famous example, do deal with a married couple, but one that has not fallen in love yet, and again ends when this is achieved.

Likewise it has been uncommon for married couples to be portrayed on a single painting. Separate portraits in matching styles are found more often. And even if a painting shows a married couple, it rarely shows their relationship, their love. There is a famous self-portrait of Rembrandt holding his wife on his lap, but officially it’s an illustration of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Western painting can be quite sensual (Boucher’s Heracles and Omphale especially comes to mind), but that’s mostly reserved for mythological themes.

So when Charles Auguste Émile Durand, who signed his pictures as Carolus-Duran, painted himself kissing his newlywed wife in 1868, he created a first.

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Paintings

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