FOLLOWER OF SIR ANTHONY VAN DYCK

James Stuart inherited the Scottish title of Duke of Lennox from his father in 1624, at the age of twelve. As his nearest male relative, the ageing King James I became his guardian. He was made a Gentleman of the Bedchamber in 1625 and was knighted in 1630. King Charles I appointed him a Privy Councillor in 1633 and in the same year installed him as a Knight of the Garter, England's highest order of chivalry. In 1637 he married Mary Villiers, only daughter of the King's favourite, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham. He was later raised to the English peerage as the 1st Duke of Richmond in 1641. During the English Civil War, in which three of his brothers died in the Royalist cause, he proved himself one of King Charles I's most loyal supporters, contributing enormous sums of money, and after the King's capitulation he was one of the five peers who offered themselves to Parliament for 'punishment' instead of the King - to no avail.

This painting relates to van Dyck's earliest and most celebrated portrait of the sitter, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no. 89.15.16), which Oliver Millar hailed as 'one of the painter's most accomplished and beautifully executed English portraits' (2004, op. cit., p. 584). The composition recalls Titian's famous portrait of Charles V with a Hound, which was then in Charles I's collection (Museo del Prado, Madrid, inv no. P000409).