A Family, probably the Streatfeild Family
William Dobson
ca. 1645
Anthony Van Dyck’s death in 1641 allowed William Dobson, an Englishman, to become the preeminent court portrait painter. Dobson’s sixty or so surviving canvases were all painted during the early 1640s in Oxford, where Charles I held court during the Civil War. When Oxford fell to the Parliamentarians, Dobson moved to London, where, lacking patronage, he was imprisoned for debt and died aged thirty-six. This group portrait is a remarkable representation of a gentry family: the Streatfeilds were ironmasters and wool merchants who rose to become landowners in Kent. It is also a memento mori portrait. The mother points toward her eldest child, singling her out as the recently departed. A red mantle further distinguishes her from the rest of the family, who are dressed in somber black. The multiple skulls foreshadow the ultimate fate of everyone in the portrait. The two children on the left were finished by another artist.
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven · Image: Yale Center for British Art, Public domain · Text: Yale Center for British Art, CC0