' Self Portrait ' Sir Antony Van Dyck, Flemish (1599-1641) Oil on canvas, circa 1640. Private Collection.

This is Antony Van Dyck's last self portrait. It is dated by most scholars to about 1640-41 and therefore done during his final year in England , where he spent more time as an independent artist than anywhere else. It is painted on an immense scale with great rapidity , and is perhaps the least formal and most self-consciously artistic of his surviving self portraits. Although the hand and brush at the end of Van Dyck's raised arm are unseen, this is the only self-portrait that comes close to showing him in the act of painting. Probably for that reason , the picture has become something of an icon amongst Van Dyck's successors in England ; it was immediately emulated by the likes of Samuel Cooper and William Dobson in their own self-portraits, and was later owned , and apparently copied by , Sir Peter Lely , Van Dyck's spiritual successor as painter to the royal court in England. Until recently, the picture had remained in the possession of the same family for almost three hundred years .It is thought to be in it's original frame.