Visit Reports
Royal Academy Exhibition - "Rubens and his Legacy" - Van Dyck to Cézanne February 4th 2015
This exhibition shows how Peter Paul Rubens (1577 - 1640) was more than a painter of voluptuous nudes and religious scenes; the focus is identifying ways in which Rubens influenced four centuries of European art.
The show is divided into six themes of Rubens paintings: Poetry, Elegance, Power, Lust, Compassion and Violence. The way the paintings are displayed trace Rubens' influence on painters from Van Dyck with whom he worked, to Cézanne, Turner, Klimt and Picasso, as well as Manet and Renoir.
The Garden of Love - Rubens 1633, shown below is a masterpiece in colour and technique showing courtship, beauty and pleasures of life; cupids with turtle doves gently guide those in love to marriage. The "story" in this painting was used by others including Watteau in his "The Pleasures of the Ball". Rubenesque ladies, all very similar-looking with their oddly round, dark eyes and pointy noses, lie sprawled around a classical pavilion with their men friends.
The paintings being compared were hung next to each other, for example, to directly compare British landscapes, such as those by Constable, with those of Rubens.
Cottage at East Bergholt, a wonderfully loosely painted and atmospheric work with a rainbow and stormy sky, which captures the qualities the Suffolk painter admired in Rubens landscapes: "dewy, light and fresh, the departing shower and returning sun". If Rubens’s landscapes are relatively little-known beside his mythological and biblical works, the richness of the works exhibited here, including The Carters and Landscape with Rainbow, shows why British artists such as Constable, Turner and Gainsborough regarded Rubens as the "father of the form".
There are more than a hundred paintings in total including 6 major works by Rubens and numerous sketches - some in chalks and ink washes; a video shows examples of the amazing ceilings he painted including the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall Palace.
The final gallery is called La Peregrina; this is the name of a famous pearl which has travelled the world; Jenny Saville has brought together an impressive collection of works by contemporary artists including Picasso, Lucian Freud, Andy Warhol Francis Bacon and Kooning who expressed the phrase "flesh was the reason oil paint was invented."
Jenny Saville's early paintings are Rubenesque are "gargantuan naked female pictures" - her recent sale was £1.5m. Her work "The Voice of the Shuttle" is different again with 2 decapitated heads above above an ambiguous pile of bodies.
A well-supported HEDFAS trip (47 of us) was thoroughly enjoyed, as we saw works by so many artists as well as Rubens, stimulating many different conversations.
Cynthia Hayhurst February 2015