Rubens's Landscapes: Making and Meaning (National Gallery London Publications) - Hardcover

Brown, Christopher Leslie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300069472 ISBN 13: 9780300069471

Publisher: National Gallery London, 1997

Synopsis

Christopher Brown takes a fresh look at the development of Rubens's landscape paintings, re-examining their chronology and their construction, and reconsidering the works in the context of Ruben's life and artistic concerns. He begins his survey by placing the landscapes in the tradition of Flemish landscape painting, in particular showing their relationship to the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (whose Flight into Egypt was owned by Rubens). He looks at Rubens's early landscapes, completed in the years following his return from Italy in 1608, immediately raising one of the principal themes of the book: how these paintings were made. A chapter is devoted to Landscape with Het Steen, in which he describes Rubens's life as a country gentleman - his purchase of the estate of Het Steen and the time he spent there in the 1630s with his second wife and young family - and discusses the composition of Landscape with Het Steen and its pendant the Landscape with a Rainbow (now in the Wallace Collection, London). He also considers Rubens's pastoral landscapes of the 1630s, showing how their mood was influenced by classical literature.
Rubens's working methods - his drawing from nature, his adaptation of landscape motifs in the studio, his use of oil sketches - are compared with contemporary landscape practice, and in a chapter on the making of the landscapes Dr. Brown describes the construction, preparation and the ground of the panels Rubens used for his landscape paintings, and the panelmakers who made them. Finally, he considers the last years at Het Steen and the ways in which Rubens's essentially private landscape paintings were made known during his lifetime and later, for example through engravings, and looks at the influence of these works on British painters, particularly Gainsborough and Constable.

About this title

About the Author:

Christopher Brown is Chief Curator of the National Gallery and Curator of Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings.

From Library Journal:

The recent London exhibit of landscapes by Peter Paul Rubens is the fourth in the National Gallery's "Making and Meaning" series. Painted mainly for Rubens himself and those close to him, the landscapes represent a more personal artistic expression than his commissioned work. Brown, the National's curator of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish paintings, shares his specialized knowledge in this comprehensive analysis. He places the landscapes within the framework of various phases in Rubens's life and his other paintings and also compares them to landscapes by his colleagues and other European artists of the 15th through 18th centuries. The technical appendix examines how individual paintings are constructed and how preliminary designs were sometimes modified. Clearly written, extensively footnoted, and lavishly illustrated, this informative book is highly recommended for academic and art libraries.?Anne Marie Lane, American Heritage Ctr., Laramie, Wy.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: National Gallery London
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0300069472
• ISBN 13: 9780300069471
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 128