Migrations” at Tate Britain is an account of the arrival of European and American artists in Britain and their contributions to and influences on British art. The overall narrative is broken down into a series of separate sections.

It begins with the many Dutch and Flemish painters who came to England in the seventeenth century to enjoy the patronage of British kings and aristocrats who wanted their portraits painted by the best artists of the day, artists who already enjoyed an international reputation. Here we find Anthony van Dyck’s iconic portrayals Charles I (1636) and Charles’s French queen, Henrietta Maria (1636). Artists from the Low Countries also introduced landscape painting to England when Charles I commissioned ten paintings of towns and castles in the north of England from 1638 to 1641. Furthermore, Dutch skill in depicting ships and the sea may be seen in Willem van de Velde the Younger’ ...

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