This is the story of the picture. 'Earl Philip of Pembroke having caused his family to meet, informs them with great emotion of the necessity of his eldest son Charles, Lord Herbert, going into the army of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, there to acquire military honour and experience, notwithstanding his having just married Mary, daughter of George, Duke of Buckingham. Lord Herbert is receiving the news with ardour, the young bride is turning aside her fair face to hide her tears. (Charles Lord Herbert was married Christmas, 1634, went to Florence, and died there of small pox, January, 1636.)
'In the Pembroke picture (or "Wilton Family") there are ten figures. The Earl and Countess are seated on a dais, under a coat of arms. He wears a great lace collar, an order on his breast, a key at his girdle, and has great shoes with roses. She has flowing curls, hanging sleeves, arms crossed, necklace on the bare neck. (The Countess of Pembroke was the Earl's second wife, Anne Clifford, daughter of George, Earl of Cumberland, the brave lady who defied Cromwell, and was fond of signing her name with the long string of titles derived from her two husbands, "Anne Dorset, Pembroke, Montgomery.") Robert Dormer, Earl of Carnarvon, is introduced with his wife, Lady Anne Sophia Herbert, daughter of Earl Philip; they are on the Countess's left hand. The daughter-in-law, about to be parted from her husband, stands on the lowest step of the dais; she is elegantly dressed, with hanging sleeves knotted with bows from shoulder to elbow. Two young men, the bridegroom and his brother, are at their father's right hand; they wear great falling collars and cloaks. There are three half-grown boys in tunics without collars, and great roses in their shoes, with a dare three daughters of the family who died in infancy.'
Van Dyck's finest sacred pictures were his early 'Crucifixion,' and a Pieta, at Antwerp. In these he gave a promise of nobler and deeper pathos than he afterwards fulfilled. His pictures are to be found freely, as I have written, in old English mansions, such as Arundel and Alnwick Castles, Knowsley, Knole, Petworth, etc. A head said to be by Van Dyck is in the National Gallery.
Van Dyck had few pupils: one, an Englishman named Dobson, earned an honourable reputation as a painter.