12 ft. 11 in. × 11 ft. 4 in. (3·94 × 2·95.)
LATE WORKS BY RUBENS
The closing decade of Rubens’s life is represented by five pictures of considerable importance. Of Queen Tomyris with the Head of Cyrus (No. 2084) there is an earlier, large, and deservedly famous version in Lord Darnley’s collection; but the Louvre picture exceeds it in beauty of design and in unity of colour. It was painted about the same time (cca. 1632) as Religion crowned by a Genius (No. 2126), one of the sketches for the ceiling at Whitehall. Of peculiar interest, owing to its unfinished state which reveals the master’s method of portraiture, is the superb portrait group of Hélène Fourment, the Artist’s Second Wife, and Two of her Children (No. 2113, [Plate XXII.]). Only the heads, which are remarkable for an intensity of expression that is rarely to be found in Rubens’s paintings, are finished. All the rest is loosely and thinly sketched in sepia heightened with swift touches of brighter colour. It was painted about 1636, which is also the approximate date of A Flemish Kermesse (No. 2115), an almost unique instance of the master applying the exuberant energy of his magic brush to a subject in which the expression of intense vitality and full-blooded sensuousness assumes the aspect almost of bestiality—which, however, in no way detracts from the artistic value of the painting. To turn from this to A Joust by the Moat of a Castle (No. 2116) is to pass from coarse realism to pure romanticism, inspired probably by the associations of the picturesque Castle of Steen, which Rubens had bought in 1635, and which forms the setting for this scene of knightly prowess. This, and the marvellous and strangely modern little Landscape (No. 2117), in which the morning sun is seen rising from the autumnal mist, belong to the closing years of Rubens’s life. He died at Antwerp on May 20, 1640.
ANTHONY VAN DYCK
Born at Antwerp in 1599, Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641), after having worked a few years under Hendrick van Balen, entered Rubens’s studio in 1615, and soon became so conversant with the method of his famous master, that he was at an early age entrusted with the execution of important designs. Before he had reached his twentieth year he was a member of the Guild of St. Luke, and had acquired a reputation second only to that of Rubens himself. The Portraits of Jean Grusset Richardot, President of the Netherlands Council, and his Son (No. 1985), which was bought in 1784 for 16,001 livres, so closely resembles the work of Rubens, especially in the brilliant flesh-painting, that the picture—a posthumous portrait, by the way—for a long time passed under the elder master’s name, although it is now admitted by the best authorities to be an early picture by Van Dyck.
Van Dyck paid a short visit to England in 1620. He went to Italy in the following year, studying the works of the great masters, and especially of Titian, and finally settling in Genoa, where he remained until his return to Antwerp in 1628. During these years he devoted himself almost exclusively to portraiture, in which he endeavoured successfully to emulate the golden warmth of colour which had drawn him towards Titian. Unfortunately this, to some the most attractive, phase of Van Dyck’s art is but indifferently shown at the Louvre, the only example being a Portrait of a Man (No. 1976).
PLATE XXII.—SIR PETER PAUL RUBENS
(1577–1640)
FLEMISH SCHOOL
No. 2113.—PORTRAIT OF HÉLÈNE FOURMENT, THE ARTIST’S SECOND WIFE, AND TWO OF HER CHILDREN
(Portrait d’Hélène Fourment, seconde femme de Rubens, et de ses enfants)