MASTERPIECES
IN COLOUR

EDITED BY . .
T. LEMAN HARE

RUBENS

In the Same Series

In Preparation

And Others.

Rubens

BY S. L. BENSUSAN
ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT
REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR

LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.

[Pg vii]

CONTENTS

[Pg viii]

[Pg ix]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[Pg x]

[Pg 11]

I

INTRODUCTION

The name of Peter Paul Rubens is
written so large in the history of
European art, that all the efforts of detractors
have failed to stem the tide of
appreciation that flows towards it. Rubens
[Pg 12]was a great master in nearly every pictorial
sense of the term; and if at times the
coarseness and lack of restraint of his
era were reflected upon his canvas, we
must blame the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries rather than the man who worked
through some of their most interesting years,
and at worst was no more than a realist.
There may have been seasons when he
elected to attempt more than any man
could hope to achieve. There were times
when he set himself to work deliberately
to express certain scenes, romantic or
mythological, in a fashion that must have
startled his contemporaries and gives
offence to-day; but to do justice to the
painter, we must consider his work as a
whole, we must set the best against the
worst.

Consider the vast range of achievements
[Pg 16]
that embraced landscape, portraiture, and
decorative work, giving to every subject
such quality of workmanship and skill in
composition, as none save a very few of
the world’s great masters have been able
to convey to canvas. And let it be remembered,
too, that Rubens was not only a
painter, he was a statesman and a diplomat;
and amid cares and anxieties that might
well have filled the life of any smaller man,
he found time to paint countless pictures
in every style, and to move steadily forward
along the road to mastery, so that his
second period is better than the first, in
which he was, if the expression may be
used with propriety, finding himself. The
third period, which saw the painting of the
great works that hang in Antwerp’s Cathedral
and Museum to-day, and is represented in
our own National Gallery and Wallace
Collection, was the best of all. Passing
from his labours as he did at a comparatively
early age, for Rubens was but sixty-three
when he died, he did not suffer the slow
decline of powers that has so often accompanied
men who reached their greatest
achievements in ripe middle age and shrink
to mere shadows of a name. He did not
reach his supreme mastery of colour until
he had lived for half a century or more,
and the pictures that have the greatest
blots upon them from the point of view of
the twentieth century, were painted before
he reached the summit of his powers. It
is perhaps unfortunate that Rubens painted
far too many works to admit of a truly
representative collection in any city or
gallery. The best are widely scattered;
some are in the Prado in Madrid, others
are in Belgium, some are in Florence.[Pg 17]
Holland has a goodly collection, while
Antwerp boasts among many masterpieces
“The Passing of Christ,” “The Adoration
of the Magi,” “The Prodigal Son,” and
“The Christ à la Paille.” Munich, Brussels,
Dresden, Vienna, and other cities have
famous examples of both ripe and early art
that must be seen before the master can
be judged fairly and without prejudice. It
is impossible to found an opinion not likely
to be shaken, upon the work to be seen in
London or in Paris, where the Louvre holds
many of the painter’s least attractive works.
It may be said that Peter Paul Rubens is
represented in every gallery of importance
throughout Europe, that the number of
his acknowledged works runs into four
figures, and that there are very few without
some definite and attractive aspect of treatment
and composition that goes far to atone[Pg 18]
for the occasional shortcomings of taste.
For his generation Rubens sufficed amply.
He was a man of so many gifts that he
would have made his mark had he never
set brush to a canvas, although time has
blotted out the recollection of his diplomatic
achievements or relegated them to obscure
chronicles and manuscripts that are seldom
disturbed save by scholars. To nine out of
ten he is known only as a painter, and his
fame rests upon the work that chances to
have given his critics their first view and
most lasting impression of his varied achievements.
It may be said that among those
who care least for Rubens, and are quite
satisfied to condemn him for the coarseness
with which he treated certain subjects,
there are many who are prompt to declare
that in matters of art the treatment is of
the first importance and the subject is but[Pg 19]
secondary. However, Rubens is hardly in
need of an apologist. His best work makes
him famous in any company, and there is
so much of it that the rest may be disregarded.
Moreover, we must not forget that
the types he portrayed from time to time
with such amazing frankness really existed
all round him. He took them as he found
them, just as the earlier painters of the
Renaissance took their Madonnas from the
peasant girls they found working in the
fields, or travelling to the cities on saint
days and at times of high festival. Many
a Renaissance Madonna enshrined on canvas
for the adoration of the devout could remove
the least suspicion of sanctity from herself,
if she did but raise her downcast eyes or
smile, as doubtless she smiled in the studio
wherein she was immortalised. For the
artist sees a vision beyond the sitter, and[Pg 20]
under his brush the sanctification or profanation
of a type are matters of simple and
rapid accomplishment. If another Rubens
were to arise to-day, he could find sitters
in plenty who would respond to the treatment
that his prototype has made familiar.
Perhaps to the men and women with whom
he was thrown in contact, these creations
were interesting inasmuch as they afforded
a glimpse into an under-world of which
they knew little or nothing. The offence
of certain pictures is increased by the fact
that, when Rubens painted them, he had
not attained to the supreme mastership over
colour, and inspiration of composition, that
came to him in later life. But in a brief
review of the artist’s life and work enough
has been told of the aspects upon which
his detractors love to dilate. It is time to
turn to his brilliant and varied career, and[Pg 21]
note the incidents that have the greatest
interest or the deepest influence upon his
art work.

II

THE PAINTER’S LIFE

Peter Paul Rubens was born in A.D. 1577,
at Siegen in Germany, where his father, Dr.
John Rubens, a man of great attainments,
was living in disgrace arising out of an old
intrigue with the dissolute wife of William
the Silent. But for the necessity of shielding
the reputation of the House of Orange,
there seems no doubt that John Rubens
would have paid the death penalty for his
offence. It is curious to reflect that, had
he done so, Peter Paul would have been
lost to the world, for the intrigue would[Pg 22]
seem to have occurred in the neighbourhood
of the year 1570, while Peter Paul was not
born until seven years later. When the
child was one year old the Rubens family
was allowed to return to Cologne, where
John Rubens had gone on leaving Antwerp
in 1568. Here Peter Paul and his elder
brother, Philip, were brought up, in utter
ignorance of the misfortunes that had befallen
their father, whose death was recorded
when his famous son was nine or ten years
old. After his decease the boys’ mother
decided to return to Antwerp, where her
husband in his early days had enjoyed a considerable
reputation as a lawyer, and held
civic appointments. Although much of the
family money must have been lost, perhaps
on account of the fall in values resulting
from the terrible war with Spain, there
would seem to have been enough to enable
[Pg 25]
the widow and her two sons to live in comfort,
if not in luxury. Peter Paul was sent
to a good school, where he made progress
and became very popular, probably because
he was strikingly handsome, considerably
gifted, and very quick to learn.

At the age of thirteen school-days came
to an end, and the boy became a page in
the service of the widowed Countess of
Lalaing, whose husband had been one of
the governors of Antwerp. Here, at a very
impressionable age, Rubens obtained first his
acquaintance with and finally his mastery
over all the intricacies of courtly etiquette.
In quite a short time he became a polished
gentleman, in the sixteenth-century acceptation
of that term. But the instinct to study
art already developed made the duties of
a page seem tiresome and unattractive, and
we learn that the boy importuned his mother[Pg 26]
to be allowed to study painting. Apparently
he had shown sufficient promise to justify
the request, and he was placed, first under
an unknown painter named Verhaecht and
then under Adam van Noort, with whom
he remained four years before passing to
the studio of Otto van Veen, a scholar, a
gentleman, and a painter of quality. The
life here would seem to have developed
in Rubens many of the qualities that were
destined to bring him fame and great rewards.
By the time he was twenty, the
Guild of St. Luke in Antwerp received him
as a member, and a year later he received
an appointment from the city to assist his
master in some civic decorations. So the
glittering years of his first youth passed,
happily, prosperously, and uneventfully, and
when he was no more than twenty-three
Peter Paul Rubens turned his steps towards[Pg 27]
Italy, then, as Paris is now, the Mecca of
the pilgrim of the Arts.

If we wish to find some explanation
for the splendid colouring that makes the
masterpieces of Rubens the delight of every
unprejudiced eye, we may surely be content
to remember that he saw Venice with the
enthusiastic eye of twenty-three in the year
1600. Even to-day when Venice, vulgarised
to the fullest extent that modern ingenuity
can accomplish, has become no more than
a remnant most forlorn of what it was, it is
one of the world’s wonder cities. When the
seventeenth century was opening its eventful
pages, the memory of wonderful achievements
was upon the great city of the Adriatic,
it was still a power to be reckoned with.
The season of pageants had not passed, and
the luck that seemed destined to accompany
Rubens throughout his career was in close[Pg 28]
attendance upon him here. The Duke of
Mantua. Vincenzo Gonzaga, saw some of
his work, and was so struck by its quality
that he sent for the young painter. The
man seemed worthy of his creations, and
the Duke promptly offered him a position
in his suite, an offer too good to be declined.
Thereafter the sojourn in Venice was a
short one. Mantua, Florence, and Genoa
were visited in turn, and in Mantua, after
some months travelling to and fro, the
Court settled down, and Rubens was enabled
to study the splendid collection of works
that the city’s rulers had collected. In the
late summer of the following year Rubens
would seem to have visited Rome, where
he faced the terrible heat without any ill
effect and devoted himself with untiring
energy to a study of the work that is to
be seen there and nowhere else. It would[Pg 29]
appear that he was well received by the
leading artists of the day, that he made
a friend of Caravaggio, and he was soon
commissioned to paint an altar-piece for
the Church of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem.
The work, done in three parts, is now we
believe in the possession of the French
Government, and is to be seen in Grasse or
one of the neighbouring towns of the Mediterranean
littoral. When Rubens’ leave of
absence expired—it must not be forgotten
that he was in the service of Mantua’s ruler,
and was not his own master—he returned
to the north, where the Duke would seem
to have employed him for a time as an art
expert. We may imagine that politics and
art were closely connected, and that Rubens
soon knew responsibility in connection with
both. The work must have been very well
done in each case, for rather more than[Pg 30]
a year later, when it became necessary in
the interests of Mantua’s political position
to send a message to the King of Spain,
Rubens was the chosen envoy.

Nowadays the journey from Mantua to
Madrid may be accomplished without extraordinary
exertion in forty-eight hours,
but three hundred years ago such a journey
must have savoured of adventure, more
particularly as the painter-diplomat was in
charge of the splendid presents sent to
Philip by the Duke. Nearly a year passed
before Rubens returned to Mantua. His
mission executed, he was rewarded with
the grant of a regular income, and after
executing some more work at home to the
complete satisfaction of his patron, he returned
to Rome, this time in the company
of his brother.

They lived near the Piazza di Spagna,[Pg 31]
where the Roman models and flower-sellers
congregate to this day, and tourists are as
the sand upon the sea-shore for multitude.
Philip Rubens, smitten by the weakness to
which so many men have succumbed before
and since, celebrated his journey by writing
a book. It was printed by the famous
Plantin Press, with one of whose directors
Peter Paul had been at school, and was
illustrated by the artist. We may suppose
that the work Rubens had done in Rome on
the occasion of his earlier visit had satisfied
its purchasers, for he received another commission
for the Chiesa Nuova, but was
recalled before it was completed, and taken
to Genoa by the Duke of Mantua. However,
he soon returned to Rome, where he remained
until the close of 1608 and then left for
Antwerp, where his mother, who had been
living in that city for some years, was[Pg 32]
dangerously ill. Rubens does not seem to
have known how ill she was, for he arrived
in Antwerp too late to see her. She was
a woman cast in heroic mould, most generous
of wives, most devoted of mothers.

Perhaps the shock of her death awoke
Rubens to the disadvantages attaching to
the paid service of any man, perhaps he was
beginning to realise his own quality and to
know that he could stand alone. Perhaps he
saw, too, that Italy had taught him as much
as his years would allow him to assimilate,
enough to make a man of mark in Antwerp.
We have no certain information on these
points, we can do no more than make surmises,
but we do know that Rubens wrote
to the Duke of Mantua, thanking him for all
the favours and marks of confidence that
he had received, and acquainting him with
his decision to resign from his service.
[Pg 35]
With the return to Antwerp the era that
opened with the visit to Venice eight years
before comes to a close, and we enter upon
the most strenuous period of the artist’s
life.

III

SECOND PERIOD

Rubens carried an assured reputation
with him to Antwerp. The story of his
success had doubtless been spread through
the town by people who were in touch
with the Italian courts, and it is hardly
likely that his elder brother Philip, now
secretary to the Antwerp Town Council,
and a man wielding considerable influence,
had forgotten to tell the story of his
brother’s progress. Antwerp was in the
early enjoyment of a period of peace following
disastrous war, and it was quite in[Pg 36]
keeping with the spirit of the times that
the leading citizens, who had taken a
prominent part in the world of strife, should
now turn their thoughts to the world of art
and should endeavour to take their part in
the friendly competition that all prosperous
cities waged against one another in their
pursuit of beauty; and this competition led
to the enriching of churches and council-chambers
with the finest ripe fruits of contemporary
art. Antwerp had established
a circle for the exclusive benefit of those
who had travelled in Italy, because it was
recognised on all sides that the best mental
and artistic development was associated
with Italian travel. Rubens was admitted
at once to the charmed circle on the
initiative of his friend Jean Breughel, the
animal painter, with whom Rubens collaborated
in a picture that may be seen to[Pg 37]-day
at the Hague, and is called “The
Earthly Paradise,” a quaint medley of two
styles that cannot be persuaded to harmonise.

Peter Paul lived with his beloved brother
Philip, to whose influence we are probably
justified in tracing the first two commissions
that were given to the young painter. One
was to take part in the work of re-decorating
the Town Hall, the other was to
prepare an altar-piece for the Church of
St. Walpurga. For the Town Hall Rubens
painted the first of his long series of
“Adorations,” and though it is emphatically
one of the works of his first period, and is
far from expressing the varied qualities
that have given him enduring fame, it
created sufficient sensation in Antwerp to
bring him the position of Court painter,
with a definite salary and a special per[Pg 38]mission
to remain in the city of his choice.
Had he been a lesser man he would have
been called away to attend the Court in
Brussels.

Undoubtedly Rubens was a patriot, a
man to whom the fallen fortunes of his city
appealed very strongly. We must never
forget that the endless wars stirred up by
Spanish ambition had roused the best instincts
of patriotism the world over, and
though Rubens was not a warrior, he was
a statesman and a patriot, who knew that
his hands and brain could serve his city
in their own effective fashion, one in no
way inferior in its results to that of the
fighting men. Perhaps we may trace to
all the mental disturbance of this era the
artist’s first great transition, for the Rubens
who painted in Antwerp after his return
from Italy and gave the “Descent from the
[Pg 41]
Cross” to his city, is quite a different man
from the one who painted the earlier pictures.
He has matured and developed, has
completed the period of assimilation through
which all creative artists must pass, has
gathered from the talents, from the genius
of the men he has studied, the material for
founding a style of his own. He begins to
speak with his own voice.

It is well that Rubens’ industry was on
a par with his talents, for commissions
poured in upon him in the first years of
his return from Italy. They came not
singly but in battalions, and very soon we
find Peter Paul Rubens following the fashion
of his time and establishing a studio
school. Naturally enough there were plenty
of young men who wished to become his
pupils, and plenty of old ones who had just
missed distinction and were anxious for[Pg 42]
any work that was remunerative. Rubens
realised that if he could but turn their
gifts to the best advantage they would at
least be as valuable to him as he could
be to them. Consequently he responded to
the suggestions that were made to him on
every side, and gathered the cleverest unattached
men of his city to the studio,
giving each one his work to do. Let us
place to his credit the fact that there was
no disguise about this procedure, it was
open and unabashed. Rubens would even
send pupils to start a work that had been
commissioned, and would not appear on the
scene until the first outline of the picture
was on the canvas. Then he would come
along and with a few unerring strokes correct
or supplement the composition, to
which his pupils could pay their further
attentions. Rubens received high prices[Pg 43]
for his work, but would give his name to a
picture in return for a comparatively low fee,
if the purchaser would but be content to
have his design and leave the painting to
pupils. It may be said that Rubens was
always fortunate in his selection of assistants,
just as he was fortunate in other
affairs of life. The great Vandyck was
among those who worked in his studio,
Snyders the celebrated animal painter was
another; it is said that Rubens never
touched his work.

Like the Florentine painters of the
Renaissance, Rubens was by no means
satisfied to devote himself entirely to paint.
He had been greatly impressed during his
sojourn in Italy by the extraordinary beauty
of the palaces of Genoa—a beauty, be it
added, that charms us no less to-day when
time has added its priceless gifts to the[Pg 44]
architects’ design. Rubens published a book
on the Genoese palaces, with something
between fifty and one hundred drawings of
his own, most carefully made. He found time
to make illustrations for the famous Plantin
Press, to which we have referred already.
He superintended the work of engraving
his own pictures, and in short showed himself
a man competent to grasp more than the
common burden of interests, and to deal with
them all with a rare intelligence coupled
with sound business instinct. Although the
painter’s education had not been great, he
had acquired scholarship at a time when
classical education was considered of the
very highest value, and no man who lacked
it could claim to be regarded as a gentleman.
He maintained correspondence with
friends in the great cities of Europe, and
as he had great personal attractions and a[Pg 45]
perfect charm of manner with which to
support his industry and achievements, there
is small need to wonder at his progress.
Success would indeed have been a fickle
jade had she refused to surrender to such
wooing.

IV

THE LATER YEARS

When the painter had passed his fortieth
year he received a commission from the
Dowager Queen Maria de Medici to paint
certain panels for her palace in Paris, and
in order to see them properly placed and
to get a comprehensive idea of the scheme
of decoration, he betook himself with the
first part of his finished work to the French
capital. There is no doubt that Rubens was
already regarded in the governing circles of
Antwerp as something more than a painter.[Pg 46]
His relations with the ruling house had
brought him into touch with diplomatic
developments—he had handled one or two
with extreme tact, delicacy, and success.
The Infanta Isabel relied upon him in seasons
of emergency, and although the political
value of his first visit to Paris in 1623 cannot
be gauged, it is fairly safe to assume that
his second visit to the capital two years
later was far more concerned with politics
than paint. To put before the reader a brief
story of the complications of the political
situation between France, Spain, and the Low
Countries would make impossible demands
upon strictly limited space, but those who
wish to understand something of the politics
of his time may be referred to the works
of Emile Michel and Max Rooses on Peter
Paul Rubens and his time. They will find
there far more historical and biographical[Pg 47]
matter than can be referred to in this place.
Suffice it to say that from 1625 Rubens must
be regarded as a diplomatist quite as much
as a painter, but curiously enough the development
of the political side of his life
did nothing to destroy the quality of his
painting. In fact he seems to have travelled
along the road of diplomacy to his best
and latest manner, to have seen life more
clearly, and the problems of his art more intelligently
than before, to have brought to his
work something of the quality that we call
genius. The one gift that the gods denied
him was poetic fancy, a quality that would
have kept him from the portrayal of types
and incidents that we are apt to regard,
with or without justification, as ugly, that
would have made his classicism pleasing to
eyes that read it at its true value. But
Rubens was one of the men who have to[Pg 48]
fight, not against failure but against success;
and the shrewd practical nature that made
him what he was served as an effective
barrier against acquisition of the qualities
that would have lifted him to the region that
always remained just beyond his reach.

1628 was a very interesting year in the
painter’s life, for he was sent on a mission
to the Court of Spain, where he met Velazquez,
who was instructed to show him all
the art treasures of the capital. What
would we not give to-day for an authentic
account of the conversations that these
men must have held together? Rubens
was at the zenith of his fame, if not of his
achievement, Velazquez was unknown save
in Seville and Madrid, and was fighting
against every class of disadvantage on the
road to belated recognition. Let those who
sneer at Rubens and can find no good about
[Pg 51]
him, remember that he it was who turned
Velazquez’ attention to Italy. Rubens found
time to paint portraits of several members
of the royal family, and these works are fine
likenesses enough, though they do not pretend
to rival Velazquez’ achievements in the
same field. The diplomatic business was
conducted with so much skill that Philip
entrusted his visitor with a mission to Paris
and London. In the last-named city Rubens
was received by Charles I., who conferred a
knighthood upon him, and approved of his
commission to decorate the banqueting-chamber
at Whitehall.

Back again in Antwerp, Rubens found
his talents sorely tried by the diplomatic
developments in which the restless ambition
of Maria de Medici involved all the countries
subject directly or indirectly to her influence.
He found himself compelled to go twice to[Pg 52]
Holland in the early thirties, but the death
of the Infanta Isabel in 1633 removed him
awhile from the heated arena of politics.
Rubens prepared Antwerp for the visit
of the Archduke Ferdinand, the Spanish
governor, the city being decorated for this
occasion at a cost of 80,000 florins. The
work was so successful that the Archduke
paid a special visit of congratulation to the
artist, who was laid up in his room by an
attack of gout. Two or three years later,
some warnings that his strength would not
hold out much longer availed to turn Rubens
from the life of Courts and capitals, and he
purchased for himself the Château de Stein,
a very beautiful estate that is preserved
for us by the delightful picture in the
National Gallery. There he settled down
for awhile to fulfil certain commissions for
the King of Spain, and doubtless had he[Pg 53]
been permitted to remain in retirement his
health would have been the better and his
life the longer. But Antwerp could not
dispense with the services of her painter-diplomat,
and many a time when he would
have been in his studio working at his
ease, some urgent message from the city
would drag him away. In the winter of
1639 he passed some months in Antwerp,
working as best he could in the intervals
of severe attacks of gout. The King of
Spain’s commission was still unfinished, and
some feeling that he himself would never
be able to complete it led Rubens to engage
a larger number of assistants than usual,
and to content himself with directing their
efforts and supplementing them as occasion
arose. He seems to have known that death
was near, for he made his will and prepared
to meet the end. It came with May[Pg 54]
in 1640, when the painter was in the sixty-fourth
year of a brilliant and useful life.

Rubens was twice married, first to Isabel
Brandt, who became his wife when she was
eighteen and he was thirty-two, shortly after
his return to Antwerp from the service of
the Duke of Mantua. A portrait of the two
sons this wife bore him may be seen in
Vienna. Isabel Brandt did not live to see
her boys, Albert and Nicholas, grow to
manhood. She died in 1626, some say from
the plague that swept Antwerp in that year.
Four years later the painter married the
beautiful Helena Fourment, when he was
fifty-four and she was sixteen, and she survived
him. He seems to have been a good
and affectionate husband and father. In
fact, it is hard to find among the biographers
of Rubens anybody who speaks
ill of the artist as a man.

[Pg 55]

V

THE PAINTER’S ART

Turning from a survey of Rubens’ life to
a consideration of his art, the three divisions
to which his work groups itself naturally,
are very clearly seen. Up to the time of his
marriage with Isabel Brandt his work may
be referred to the first division, and in art it
may be said that no man’s earliest pictures
are of much consequence save for their
promise of higher things. They do little
more than mark his progress, record impressions
he has received from strong personalities,
and mark his own path through the
influences of different schools and varied
appeals, to the complete expression of himself.
Rubens was never a slavish imitator,
he never assumed the mantles of the men
he admired, as so many great painters[Pg 56]
have done. Goya, for example, was a man
whose range of thought and capacity for
receiving impressions were so great that
he has painted after the manner of half-a-dozen
masters, and there are pictures to
be seen in Madrid to-day that are painted
with Goya’s brush and recall Fragonard.
Such instances may be multiplied, and
Rubens is to be admired for the restraint
that marked this side of his early
work.

From the time of his marriage down to
the season when he became recognised on
all sides as a diplomatist, let us say roughly
from 1610 to 1626, we get the second period,
and to this may be referred the greater part
of the work that has given offence—the
presentation of the coarsest types of men
and women in a state of nature—the treatment
of some of the grossest incidents in[Pg 57]
mythological stories in fashion that leaves
nothing to the imagination.

We are justified in asking ourselves
whether the extraordinary development of
the painter’s social and political life did not
avail to arrest in late middle age any
tendencies he might otherwise have had to
express still further the coarser side of
classical subjects. By the time he reached
the forties, Rubens was the companion
and even the trusted counsellor of princes
and rulers. Such refinement as Western
Europe boasted was to be met in the
circles he frequented. The greatest work
of the greatest masters was within his
reach, and he had travelled to the point at
which a man is able to select as well as
to admire, at which he can distinguish clearly
between the points that make for a picture’s
strength and those that detract from it.[Pg 58]

Rubens on arriving in Italy in the days
when he had first taken service under the
Duke of Mantua, was doubtless unduly impressed
by Michel Angelo and Raphael. On
no other grounds can we account for the
delight that his earliest pictures manifest in
the portrayal of massive and even ugly limbs.
Doubtless he was influenced too by Titian,
though we cannot agree that it was his
admiration for the master that made him
copy the King’s Titians in the Prado, for
it is more probable that on this occasion he
simply obeyed instructions. Moreover, Rome
appealed to him more than Venice did.
The wistful purity of a Bellini Madonna,
the exquisite loveliness of a Bellini child or
cherub, left him unmoved, but a Titian or a
Tintoretto at its biggest, if not at its best,
pleased him, and when he came in Rome
to the works of Raphael and Michel Angelo
[Pg 61]
he would seem to have looked no further for
inspiration. Doubtless he heard many interesting
theories of art in Rome, where, as we
have said, Caravaggio, who wielded considerable
influence in the art world, was among
his friends. But Rubens thought out things
for himself, and learned to quell his own
instincts and to subdue his own faults as
they were revealed to him.

Violence is perhaps the characteristic of
Rubens’ early work. He has the grand
manner without the grand method, his contrasts
of light and shade and even of colour
amuse where they do not offend, and his
drawing is by no means remarkable or
inspired. At best it is correct. We feel that
we cannot see the wood because of the
trees, that the blending has not been sufficiently
skilful to bring about proportion
and harmony, and that the expression of a[Pg 62]
giant form with prize-fighter’s muscles in
the foreground of a canvas is sufficient
to fill the painter with a delight that enables
him happily to ignore the rest. It is
the enthusiasm of clever youth, the youth
of a man in whose veins there is enough
and to spare of very healthy blood, in
whose mental equipment refinement has
been overlooked.

The death of his mother, the distressful
plight of his favourite city, the responsibility
of his commissions, his marriage and
the fruits of his Italian travel brought
about the second period, and started the
traditions that give Antwerp a school and
a name in the history of European art.
The violence passes slowly from the canvases,
the straining after effect that is so
obvious and often so unpleasing in the
earlier pictures goes with it. The chiaro[Pg 63]scuro
is more subdued and consequently
more pleasing, only in the handling of
colour the painter is still clumsy and heavy.
Rubens, the great colourist, seems to have
been born when the artist was more than
forty years old.

Some of the best work of the second
period is in Antwerp and Brussels, but it is
to be found scattered all over Europe, and
there are examples in private collections
in this country. Perhaps the dominant impression
that these works leave is one of
certain difficulties created to be overcome.
Just as the painter in his first manner revelled
in his strength, so in his second
period he rejoices in his skill. It was left
to the later years to weld strength and
skill into the service, on pictures that could
stand for both and emphasise neither.
Mythology continued to hold him, indeed[Pg 64]
we must never forget that Rubens lived
in the age of pseudo-classicism, and is to
be counted among its victims. To his
second period belongs such work as the
disgusting “Procession of Silenus” now in
Munich, a picture in which the grossness
of the theme is only rivalled by the vulgarity
of the treatment. Some of Rubens’
apologists have held that this class of
work was painted as a protest against
vice, but such apologies are far-fetched.
Rubens needs no apologist. Consider his
work as a whole, and what is good dwarfs
what is bad. Doubtless, had he been able
in the later days to re-possess and destroy
some of his more tainted pictures, he would
have done so. It will be remarked by all
who know Rubens’ work intimately, that
throughout his life he was happier with a
Venus than a Madonna, more at home[Pg 65]
with some great classical figure, than with
the picture of Christ. He did not respond
to Christianity in the sense that the Venetians
responded to it, he could not for all
his reputation have painted a Madonna as
Bellini did, and there is no reason to
believe that he would have cared to do so.
Then again we may not forget that Rubens
the artist, and Rubens the courtier, and
Rubens the special envoy, were closely
associated with Rubens the man of business,
who would always have painted for
choice the work likely to find immediate
acceptance. There were times when some
legend of Saint or Martyr moved him
strangely, and he turned to it with a measure
of inspiration not often excelled by
the greatest of the Renaissance artists;
but these occasions were rare, although
Antwerp preserves one of the most effective[Pg 66]
results of such inspiration in the “Last
Communion of St. Francis.” It may be remarked
in this place that to see Rubens
at his best, one must not go to the
National Gallery or to the Louvre or to
the Prado—Antwerp and Vienna hold some
of the finest examples of his second and
third manner. And we must never forget
that Art is concerned with treatment, and
that subject is of secondary interest to
artists.

When he became recognised as a diplomatist
whose services were required by
Europe’s greatest potentates, Rubens had
passed the meridian of life. He had known
prosperity from the very earliest days, he
had no occasion to paint pictures of the
sort so admirably summed up by the offensive
word “pot-boiler.” Kings and Queens
and Emperors were offering him commissions,[Pg 67]
he was, if we may say so, on his best behaviour.
He rose to the height of every
great occasion. The commission that Maria
de Medici gave him for her palace seems
to have brought him to his third and latest
manner, and from that year until death
overtook him Rubens was one of the great
masters of European art. If we could eliminate
all the pictures of his first manner
and a considerable portion of those belonging
to his middle period, his claims would
hardly be denied by the representatives and
supporters of any school. He seems to
have received added inspiration from his
child wife, and there are few more delightful
pictures than one to be seen in Munich
in which Rubens and Helena Fourment are
walking from their garden to their château.
Perhaps even in the later days woman was
nothing more than a thing of beauty for a[Pg 68]
man’s delight, and man was no more than
a godlike animal, but a well-defined measure
of refinement was always beyond their
painter’s mental or artistic conceptions. It
is sufficient for us that the appeal of nature
came to him with great strength. The
Château of Stein in our National Gallery
and the Rainbow Landscape in the Wallace
Collection gives sufficient evidence of this,
while such a work as the Garden of Venus
in the Prado suggests the limitations that
were with him throughout his life. It is
fair to say that in the later years they
were not expressed so prominently in his
work.

Finally we have to consider and acknowledge
his triumphs as a colourist. It
may be said that Rubens, for all his gifts,
required more than twenty years of unremitting
labour to obtain his mastery over colour,
[Pg 71]
but when once it was his he retained the
gift to the last hour. In the early days
Rubens as a colourist was a person of no
importance, the grossness of his composition
and the tameness of his drawing were not
redeemed by the handling of pigment. In
the second period the use of paint is far
more skilled, but it does not blend, neither
does it glow. In the later years it acquires
both gifts, and the exquisitely luminous
quality of some of his pictures, the marvellous
delicacy of flesh tint, that must
have astonished and delighted his patrons, is
preserved to us to-day. In fact it may be
said that Rubens has preserved his colour
to a larger extent than many great painters
who came after him. He is far more reliable
in this aspect of his art than is our own
Sir Joshua, whose portraits have long ceased
to tell the story they must have told to[Pg 72]
delighted and flattered sitters. It was no
effort of genius that made Rubens a
supreme colourist in the later years. He
came to his kingdom by dint of sheer hard
work, but for his painstaking devotion to
labours such results could not have been
achieved.

The spirit of the Renaissance travelled
very slowly from Italy to the Netherlands,
and that its influence was felt in the sixteenth
century did not lead to any very
marked divergence from the traditions that
the art of the Netherlands was following.
Italian form and Italian sentiment met with
little response there, and there is no doubt
that the eighty years of conflict with Spain
which led to the recognition of the Republic,
turned men’s thoughts away from
art. By the time it was possible to revive
a school, the Netherlands were looking to[Pg 73]
life rather than to faith, and even the
classicism of the period that turned Rubens
towards pictures illustrating mythological
incidents could not help him to create imaginary
figures. This is as it should have
been, for it made eighteenth-century art
what it was through the influence of
Rubens and Vandyck. He filled his canvas
with the types he saw around him, and
while nobody will dispute the virtue of the
Netherlands, there will be few found to
assert that it produced the Latin type of
womanhood. The people of the Netherlands
do not belong to the Latin races;
that is why they did not respond earlier to
the Renaissance, that is why they look at
what seems to be their worst rather than
their best in some of Rubens’ most ambitious
works. Yet by reason of his long sojourn
and hard study in Italy, Rubens did do[Pg 74]
something considerable to bring Italian art
and tradition into the Netherlands, and if
he could not establish it there, the cause of
failure was that the genius of the country
was opposed to it. Among the painters
who worked for Rubens or were greatly influenced
by him the best known are Anthony
Vandyck, Frans Snyders, Abraham Janssens,
Jacob Jordaens, and Jan Van Den
Hoecke. Then again, of course, it must
not be forgotten that he exercised a very
great influence upon David Teniers, and
that he served the interests of art development
far more than he could have done by
giving fresh life to an art form that had
served its time and purpose.

Rubens the landscape painter, the painter
of religious and mythological subjects, has
rather obscured Rubens the portrait painter,
and this is not as it should be, for many[Pg 75]
will be inclined to agree that it is as a
portrait painter that Rubens was often at his
best. Visitors to Florence will not forget the
portrait group entitled “The Philosophers,”
that may be seen in the Pitti Palace.
Our Wallace Collection has a delightful
portrait of Isabel Brandt, and the National
Gallery holds the portrait of Suzanne Fourment,
“Le Chapeau de Paille,” while Amsterdam
and other cities hold portraits of his
second wife, the famous portrait of Gervatius
is to be seen in Antwerp, and there are
several delightful examples of his portraiture
in Brussels. It was in these schools of art
that Rubens has succeeded in pleasing
many who turn with feelings not far removed
from disgust from his unshrinking
studies of the coarse overblown or overgrown
womanhood. He contrived either
to confer a measure of dignity upon his[Pg 76]
sitters or to conserve one. His portraits
of his two wives, and the portrait group in
the Pitti Palace that introduces his brother,
are full of a deep feeling for which we may
look in vain to many of his larger canvases.
Just as the pianist or violinist will
turn from playing some wonderful concerto
bristling with difficulties for the soloist and
calculated to delight the ears of the groundlings,
and then taking up some simple piece
by a great master will infuse into it all
the qualities that the showy concerto hid,
so Rubens turned from the wars and
loves of gods and goddesses, from Bacchic
carnivals and groups in which nudity is insisted
upon sometimes at the expense of
relevance, and would paint portraits that
will be a delight as long as they remain
with us. Rubens painting the portrait of
wife or brother or friend, and Rubens[Pg 77]
covering vast canvases with glittering and
sometimes meretricious work are two different
men. We may admire the latter,
but we come near to intimate appreciation
of the former. In the portraits the man is
revealed, in the big pictures we see no
more than artist, and some of us fail to
realise how clever he is, how many problems
of composition and tone and light
and shade he has grappled with and overcome
in manner well-nigh heroic.

The secret of his changing moods is of
course beyond us, but perhaps one may
hazard an explanation for the difference
in the quality of the work done. As far as
we can see from a study of the painter’s
work and life, he approached mythology
and Christianity from a purely pictorial
standpoint, and did not believe in one or
the other. “The Procession to Calvary,”[Pg 78]
“The Crucifixion,” “The Descent from the
Cross,” “The Flight into Egypt,” “The
Adoration of the Magi,” “The Draught of
Fishes,” “The Raising of the Cross,” “The
Assumption of the Virgin,” “The Last
Supper,” “The Circumcision,” “The Flagellation,”
and the rest, were no more and no
less to him as subjects than “The Drunken
Hercules” or “The Battle of the Amazons,”
“The Garden of Venus” or “The Judgment
of Paris.” They were popular subjects
for effective treatment, pictures that would
make a sure appeal to those who loved either
the sacred or the profane in art, pictures to
be executed with all possible skill at the
greatest possible speed, and with a measure
of assistance regulated by the price that
was to be paid for them. But the portraits
of his friends, of the brother he loved, and
of the wives to whom he was a devoted[Pg 79]
husband, stood on quite a different plane.
He felt the human interest attaching to
them, and this human interest brought to
his canvas certain qualities that belong to
the heart rather than the head, and have
given them a claim that is not disputed
even by the painter’s most severe critics.

The plates are printed by Bemrose & Sons, Ltd., Derby and London
The text at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh