Rubens' landscapes are not the least renowned of his pictures. He gave to his own rich but prosaic Flanders, all the breadth and breeziness and matchless aërial effects of a master of painting, and a true lover of nature under every aspect, who can indeed distinguish, under the most ordinary aspect, those hidden treasures which all but a lover and a man of genius would pass by. His 'Prairie of Laacken,' 'with the sun of Flanders piercing the dense yellow clouds with the force of fire,' is of great repute.
Among his famous portraits I shall mention that called 'The Four Philosophers' (Justus Lepsius, Hugo Grotius, Rubens, and his brother), with peaked beards and moustaches, in turned-over collars, ruffs and fur-trimmed robes, having books and pens, a dog, and a classic bust as accessories. The open pillared door is wreathed with a spray from without, and there is a landscape in the background. This portrait is full of power, freedom, and splendid painting.
Another portrait contains that sweetest of Rubens' not often sweet faces, called 'the Lady in the Straw Hat.' Rubens himself did not name the picture otherwise in his catalogue. Tradition says the original was Mdlle Lundens, the beauty of the seventeen provinces, and that she died young and unmarried. Connoisseurs value the picture because of the triumph of skill by which Rubens has painted brilliantly a face so much in the shade; to those who are not connoisseurs I imagine the picture must speak for itself, in its graceful, tender beauty. Forming part of the collection of the late Sir Robert Peel (I think he gave three thousand pounds for 'the Lady in the Straw Hat'), which has been bought for the country, this beautiful portrait is now in the National Gallery.
And now I must speak of the picture of the Arundel Family. But first, a word about Thomas, Earl of Arundel. It is impossible to write an English work on art and omit a brief account of one of England's greatest art benefactors. Thomas, Earl of Arundel, representing in his day the great house of Howard, had a love of art which approached to a mania; and without being so outrageously vain as Sir Kenelm Digby, there is no doubt that the Earl counted on his art collection as a source of personal distinction. James I., himself an art collector, so far humoured the Earl in his taste as to present him with Lord Somerset's forfeited collection, valued at a thousand pounds. But Charles I, and the Earl became rival collectors, and little love was lost between them. The Earl of Arundel impairing even his great revenues in the pursuit, employed agents and ambassadors—notably Petty and Evelyn—all over Europe, to obtain for him drawings, pictures, ancient marbles, gems, &c. &c. When the civil wars broke out, Lord Arundel conveyed his priceless collection for safety to Antwerp and Padua. Eventually it was divided among his sons and scattered far and wide. The only portion of it which fell to the nation, in the course of another generation, was the Greek Marbles, known as the Arundel Marbles, which were finally presented to the University of Oxford. But in Rubens' day all this grand collection was intact, and displayed in galleries at Arundel House, which the mob thought fit to nickname 'Tart Hall;' and through these galleries Rubens was conducted by the Earl.
Lord Arundel desired to have an Arundel family portrait painted for him by Rubens. The Earl was rather given to having Arundel family portraits, for there are no less than three in which he figures. One by Van Somer, in which the hero is pointing somewhat comically with his truncheon to the statues of his collection in the background, and the last one projected by Van Dyck, but executed by an inferior artist, in which various family pieces of armour, swords, and shields, worn at Flodden, or belonging to the poet Earl of Surrey, are introduced in the hands of the sons of the family.
But it is with Rubens' 'Arundel Family,' which, we must remember, ranks second in English family pictures, that we have to do. Thomas, Earl of Arundel, and the Lady Alathea, [24] are under a portico with twisted columns, like those in Raphael's cartoons; a rich curtain, and a landscape with a large mansion are seen beyond. The Countess is seated in a chair of state, with one hand on the head of a white greyhound; she wears a black satin gown, laced ruff, gold bracelets, and pearl necklace. Her hair is light, and decked with pearls and plumes. The Earl stands behind with a hand on her chair. His head is uncovered, the short hair inclining to grey; the whiskers and beard pointed. His vest is olive-coloured, and he has a brown mantle lined with crimson over the shoulders beneath his ruff. There is a little boy—Earl Thomas's grandson, Philip Howard, afterwards Cardinal Howard, in crimson velvet, trimmed with gold lace, and a dwarf on the other side of the dog, with one hand on its back.
Among other master-pieces of Rubens, including the 'Straw Hat,' which are in the National Gallery, there are the 'Rape of the Sabines,' and the landscape 'Autumn,' which has a view of his country château, de Stein, near Mechlin. In Dulwich Gallery there is an interesting portrait by Rubens of an elderly lady in a great Spanish ruff, which is believed to be the portrait of his mother.
Rembrandt Van Rhyn is said to have been born near Leyden about 1606 or 1608, for there is a doubt as to the exact date. His father was a miller or maltster, and there is a theory that Rembrandt acquired some of his effects of light and shade from the impressions made upon him during his life in the mill. He was a pupil at the Latin school of Leyden, and a scholar in studios both at Leyden and Amsterdam.
In 1630, when Rembrandt was a mere lad, he seems to have settled in Amsterdam, and married there in 1634, when he was six or eight and twenty years of age, a young Dutchwoman possessed of a considerable fortune, which, in case of her death and of Rembrandt's re-marriage, was to pass to her children, a provision that in the end wrought Rembrandt's ruin. The troubles of his country in the painter's time rendered his prices comparatively small and precarious, and Rembrandt, like Rubens, without Rubens' wealth, was eager in making an art collection and surrounding himself with those very forms of beauty in the great Italian masters' works, in the appreciation of which the Dutch master—judged by his own works—might have been reckoned deficient.
Rembrandt's wife died after eight years of marriage, and left him with one surviving son, Titus, and Rembrandt, having re-married, was called upon to give up the lad's inheritance. This call, together with the expenditure of the sums which Rembrandt had lavished on his collection, was too heavy upon funds never very ample, and the painter, after struggling with his difficulties, became a bankrupt in 1656. His son took possession of Rembrandt's house, and from the sale of the painter's art collection and other resources eventually recovered his mother's fortune, but Rembrandt himself never rose above the misery, degradation, and poverty of this period. He lived thirteen years longer, but it was in obscurity—out of which the only records which reach us, are stories of miserly habits acquired too late to serve their purpose, a desperate resort to low company dating from his first wife's death, and his gradual downfall.