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In this grand and opulent work van Dyck creates the image of a powerful, confident, and rich military man. Typically for a portrait of the artist's later English period, he has used none of the conventional symbols of allegory to indicate aspects of the sitter's importance. Instead, Newport's wealth and noble status are represented by his rich clothing (especially his intricately painted lace collar and colorful silk gauze sash), his easy yet powerful pose, and his elegant demeanor.
It is likely that the Earl of Newport and van Dyck were well acquainted, since the sitter's wife was the sister-in-law of Endymion Porter, the painter's great friend and patron. Van Dyck painted Newport more than once in the late 1630s; there exist two half-length portraits of him with George, Baron Goring, the noted courtier. In a reference that may be to the present portrait, the seventeenth-century writer Bellori, in his biography of van Dyck, states that the artist painted the Earl of Newport "issuing orders to officers, with two armed figures behind." [1] Certainly, Newport's authoritative manner here would be consistent with his giving orders to his men.
Mountjoy Blount, 1st Earl of Newport (c. 1597-1666), was the illegitimate son of Charles Blount, Earl of Devonshire and 8th Lord Mountjoy, and Penelope Devereux, Lady Rich. Sister of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex-the notorious lover and favorite of Queen Elizabeth I-Penelope Devereux had married Robert, Lord Rich in 1581; theirs was an unhappy marriage from its outset, contemporary rumors declaring that it was only Lord Rich's fear of his wife's powerful brother that tempered his unkind, even ruthless, behavior toward her. Lady Rich found solace outside her marriage: passionate about literature, she maintained a close friendship with the poet Philip Sidney throughout her life. By 1595 she had openly become the mistress of Lord Mountjoy. The lovers had three children out of wedlock; Mountjoy subsequently acknowledged all of them as his own. In 1601 Lord Rich abandoned his wife, and two years later they divorced. Lady Rich and Lord Mountjoy were married in 1605. Newport was thus related by blood to some of the most in?uential ?gures of the Elizabethan era, and later his half-brothers Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, and Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland, played crucial roles in Caroline court politics, both ultimately standing against the Crown during the Civil War.
Like his half-brothers, Newport enjoyed favor with the king and queen throughout the 1620s. In the early years of that decade he was charged with diplomatic affairs in England and abroad. He became an earl in 1628, taking his title from Newport on the Isle of Wight. In August 1634 Charles I appointed him Master of the Ordnance for life, a post in which he made a fortune for himself. At the onset of the Civil War Newport hesitated as to his allegiances but eventually settled his loyalty on the side of the Crown. Van Dyck's portrait suggests none of the sitter's wavering attitudes to the Crown but presents him at his seemingly dauntless prime, a fashionable courtier and imposing military leader of the golden years of Charles I's reign.

Julia Marciari-Alexander

Julia Marciari-Alexander, This other Eden, paintings from the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1998, p. 30, no. 4, ND1314.3 Y36 1998 (YCBA)