Johan van der Banck was born in London on 9 Sept 1694 and baptised in the church of St Giles in the Fields. He was the son of Johan van der Banck the Elder, Chief Arras Maker to the Wardrobe and head of the Soho Tapestry Manufactory. Although originally from the Netherlands, the van der Banck family was Huguenot in origin. John’s brother was the painter Moses Vanderbank. John probably studied under his father and Richardson. The closest approximation to an academic life-drawing class at that time, was established by Sir Godfrey Kneller in 1711 and Vanderbank attended from its founding. It has been observed by art historians that a number of paintings originating from his studio were signed ‘After Kneller’ having been executed by his students. Kneller was succeeded in due course by Sir James Thornhill, who conducted life-drawing classes from a room he added to his own house in James Street, Covent Garden, from 1724 until his death in May 1734, but he had small success in finding subscribers, his son-in-law William Hogarth recalled; Hogarth attributed its failure in some measure to the rival drawing-academy in St Martin’s Lane, established in an old Presbyterian meeting house by Vanderbank and Louis Chéron in 1720. Their institution placed a greater emphasis on life drawing. Vanderbank’s first signed work dates from 1720 and in tandem with the school, he established himself as a painter of portraits. He visited France to avoid his creditors in May – October 1724, but was seldom out of debt. In the 1720s Vanderbank attracted sitters who included Isaac Newton (1725; London, Royal Society. Another version of the same date hangs in Trinity College, Cambridge) and Thomas Guy (London, Guy’s Hospital). His Royal commissions included King George I (1726; in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle) and Queen Caroline (1736; Goodwood House, West Sussex). His portraits of Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough (1719), Edward Wortley Montague (1730) and John Harvey (1732) may be found in the Government Art Collection. His portrait of John Michael Rysbrack may be found in the National Portrait Gallery. His elegant A Youth of the Lee Family, Probably William Lee of Totteridge Park (1738) may be found in the collection of the Tate. According to George Vertue, Vanderbank originated the fashion for painting women in Rubens costume with the portrait of his wife in 1732. Vanderbank’s illustrations to Twenty-Five Actions of the Manège Horse were published in 1729 and he beat Hogarth for the commission to carry out those for Don Quixote in 1738. Vanderbank’s technique is distinct among portraitists of the early 18th century and follows in the traditions of grand portraiture that had become part of Van Dyck’s legacy to British painting. His work is characterised by a more vital and nervous drawing than that exhibited by his contemporaries, and by a bold pigmentation, particularly in the flesh, where hot pink and cool grey-green are juxtaposed to suggest glowing skin – the technique of colori cangianti, derived via Rubens from the artists of the secento. Vanderbank’s distinctive colouring, especially of the flesh, is an attributional tool in recognising his work. Vanderbank carried out decorative painting at 11 Bedford Row, London (c. 1720), (although at one time, the work was attributed by the ‘experts’ to Antonio Verrio, despite that artist having been called to his reward in 1707). Vanderbank executed the designs on the staircase. The commission also included an equestrian portrait of King George I surrounded by allegorical figures, as well as an allegory of the Arts and of Britannia receiving the commerce of the world. Some of Vanderbank’s drawings, such as Cybele (version, Chicago, Art Institute) and St Michael in Combat with Lucifer (Vienna, Albertina), similarly show an interest in Baroque decorative design, but he did not develop this further. Vanderbank’s book illustrations include the portrait of Sir Isaac Newton used in the frontspiece of 1726 edition of Principia as well as the 66 plates of the first edition in Spanish of Miguel de Cervante’s Don Quixote published in England in 1738. Vertue lamented that ‘only intemperance prevented Vanderbank from being the greatest portraitist of his generation.’ After a career dogged by debt-inspired episodes and habitual drunkenness, the artist expired at his London home on 23 December 1739 and was laid to rest in St Marylebone Parish Church.