This is probably the most dramatic and animated female portrait from Van Dyk’s English period. Olivia Boteler Porter is portrayed here not as a society lady but as a classical figure standing against a natural landscape.

Her loose clothing – a shift fastened at the shoulder with a jewelled brooch – is likely to have been selected by the artist, who frequently dressed his sitters in expensive clothes and accessories. It does not refer to any classical goddess but embodies the ‘careless romance’ that occasionally characterises Van Dyck’s female portraits, which influenced Lely’s style at the Restoration court.

The costume, setting and movement suggest also a theatrical atmosphere. Olivia, in fact, performed in Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones’s masque of ‘Chloridia’, in 1631.

Olivia, or more likely her husband, clearly wished to create a timeless image of a beautiful sitter. This kind of portrait, with few references to the everyday, was to influence subsequent portrait painters who aspired to elevated images of their sitters that could compete with classical and mythological paintings.

The nineteenth-century frame bears a wrong label and identification.

Provenance: Accepted in lieu of Inheritance Tax by H M Government and allocated to the Bowes Museum 2015.

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, County Durham
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641)
Date: c.1637

Image Details
Date: 12 May 2024
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/33s
ISO: 320
Licensing: Image of a Bowes Museum asset. This image cannot be licensed.