Scholars call for plaque to mark site of Van Dyck’s lost studio

SIR ANTHONY VAN DYCK’S lost London studio has been found, prompting calls from scholars for a commemorative plaque to mark the historic 17thcentury site.

James Innes-Mulraine, an art historian, has traced the location of “a showpiece studio fit for a King’s painter” that once stood on the Thames to what is now a conference and events venue in Blackfriars.

It was there that Van Dyck met Charles I, and later his son, the future Charles II, who visited the Flemish master by water on at least three occasions between 1635 and 1641.

A 1635 letter states that “his Majesty had taken a house for him” and that the master architect Inigo Jones had “putt it in order for his use”.

Mr Innes-Mulraine described its location as one of the last unsolved mysteries of the artist’s second period in England, along with the cause of his death in 1641, aged just 42. He pinpoints the site beneath the former Mermaid Theatre, now the events venue Mermaid London, in the City of London.