Circle of Sir Anthony van Dyck (Antwerp 1599-1641 London)

Sons of the assassinated Duke of Buckingham (1592-1628), George and Francis Villiers were brought up alongside the future Charles II (1630-1685) in the royal household of Charles I (1600-1649), who had been a devoted friend of their father. Both brothers fought for the Royalist armies during the English Civil War. Francis, who had been praised for his dashing good-looks by the poet Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), fell in 1648 near Kingston-Upon-Thames, but George went onto become one of the rakish favourites at the Restoration Court of his childhood friend, Charles II. Of van Dyck's prime version of the present double portrait (The Royal Collection, inv. no. RCIN 404401) the famous arbiter of taste Horace Walpole (1717-1797) said that 'nothing can exceed the nature, lustre, and delicacy of this sweet picture', which he regarded as 'one of the finest of this master'. The composition has always been much admired, with its influence evident in the child portraiture of leading British artists such as Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. (1723-1792) and Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788).