Anthony van Dyck, 'William Feilding, 1st Earl of Denbigh', about 1633-4

William Feilding, 1st Earl of Denbigh steps forward, gun in hand. He is shown life-size. We look up at him from below, which emphasises his commanding pose, but the elegance and urbanity usually present in Anthony van Dyck’s formal portraits seems to be missing. This is partly because of the Earl’s relaxed clothing – a mix of contemporary Indian and European fashions – and because the pose is a little contrived and awkward. The setting is also more like a stage set than a real place. The Indian servant boy points up at the parrot that the Earl can already see. He points awkwardly across his body rather than directly up at the bird and both of them look puzzled, as if wondering what to do next.

Van Dyck must have collaborated closely with his sitters, agreeing on dress and pose. He painted them as they wished to be seen, but also presented their characters as they revealed themselves to him. The Earl had returned from a voyage to India to visit the early settlements imposed by the East India Company; it is this important trip that he must have wanted to commemorate. Other portraits of him are more formal and conventional.

He wears a silk jacket and pyjamas (these are the light, loose trousers, not the nightwear whose name has subsequently come into English from Urdu). He was one of the few Europeans in India at the time to adopt indigenous dress, but in the portrait he wears it with the ornate collar worn at the court of Charles I. The servant’s costume is not authentic – it appears to have come from a dressing up box kept in van Dyck’s studio containing ‘exotic’ garments to be worn by any Asian or African servant figure in his pictures. The palm tree, too, is unreal, probably taken from the often highly imaginative illustrations brought back from India, and behind the Earl is a very English looking oak. The parrot is likely to be a South American macaw and not an Indian bird. Despite the unreality of this work, the Earl was obviously eager to be seen as an intrepid traveller, not only immersing himself in Indian culture but, by adopting local dress, almost part of it. Certainly the portrait is unique in its depiction of an Englishman in India in the early seventeenth century, and it probably caused comment among viewers of his time.

The Earl was the brother-in-law of the Duke of Buckingham, favourite of Charles I. As the Duke’s influence increased, the Earl received various offices and dignities, becoming an Admiral in 1625 and later, in the 1630s, ambassador to the court of Shah Safi of Persia. During the Civil War in Britain he served under Prince Rupert at the Battle of Edgehill in 1642. The following year, he was wounded during Rupert’s attack on Birmingham and died from the effects.