18 December 2019

Video: ‘Van Dyck or not Van Dyck?’ at the Royal Hospital Chelsea

On a dark December day in 2017, JVDPPP team members stumbled across a remarkable story in the Heinz Library at the National Portrait Gallery, London. They were examining the archive of the famous Van Dyck scholar, Sir Lionel Cust, who was also the Surveyor of the King’s Pictures from 1901 to 1927.

In 2018 and again in 2019, the JVDPPP co-founder Justin Davies and UK Archival Researcher James Mulraine were invited by the Governor of the Royal Hospital, General Sir Adrian Bradshaw, to relate their tale of the unlikely art historical collaboration between Cust and Corporal Charles Dyas, a Chelsea Pensioner. Also, to answer the fundamental question raised by Dyas. Is the Chelsea painting of Charles I and his family a Van Dyck or not a Van Dyck?

A recording of the talk is now available on YouTube.