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Lot Essay
This fascinating panel, comprising thirteen head studies, provides a remarkable insight into the reproduction and diffusion of designs and figure types by the most significant Flemish painter of the 17th century: Sir Peter Paul Rubens.
Following his training in Antwerp and several years working in Italy, Rubens returned to Flanders in 1608 and set-up a workshop in his native city. By the mid-1610s, he was an established and successful painter, maintaining a busy and highly successful studio made up of apprentices and journeymen painters (fully trained artists who did not possess a studio of their own). At this date, Rubens began painting studies of heads to keep in the workshop to serve as models for compositions. These head-studies allowed the artist to regulate the quality of his assistants’ work and also to save time from inventing new figure types. Many of these studies would likely have been prepared for specific paintings, but were retained in the workshop where they could continue to be used and adapted by the master and his studio (J. Held, The Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens: A Critical Catalogue, Princeton and London, 1980, I, p. 597).
After his death in 1640, the contents of Rubens’s studio was sold, including ‘une quantité des visages au vif, sur toile, & fonds de bois, tant de Mons. Rubens’ (J. Held, loc. cit). The present work, dating to the end of the 17th century, was painted by an artist working within Rubens’s circle, who was evidently familiar his compositions, working practices and techniques. The panel’s thin brown ground was the standard technique used by the older master for his sketches and the carefully observed figure studies (almost all of which re-use existing Rubensian prototypes) are painted in a free, assured manner, closely reminiscent of Rubens’s own style. The curling hair of the man at the top-left of the panel, and of the young boy in the centre, is particularly successfully rendered in only a few swift brushstrokes and, in the profile study of the old woman, great pains have been taken in the rendering of her wrinkled skin. Panels of this type are rare and provide a fascinating means of better understanding the dissemination of designs from the Rubens workshop. This picture would, presumably, have occupied an important place in its painter’s workshop providing invaluable sources for a variety of compositions and figures.
Some of the studies are directly copied from works by Rubens and his studio, while the prototypes of others are somewhat more difficult to discern. The first two studies, both of the same man, are in fact taken from two studies by Jacob Jordeans, formerly with Derek Johns Gallery, though that in the uppermost left corner bears similarities to the St. Christopher in Rubens’s Descent from the Cross triptych (Antwerp, Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal) and the pipe-player in the Drunken Silenus supported by Satyrs (London, National Gallery, executed in Rubens’s studio with the assistance of Van Dyck). The next two studies show a man with dark, greying hair and Roman nose, the right of which directly copies Rubens’s Portrait of a Man of circa 1615 (on loan to the Yale University Art Gallery), reused two years later for the Head of One of the Three Kings: Melchior, The Assyrian King (Washington, National Gallery of Art). The head of a cardinal at the upper right of the present panel replicates Rubens’s St Jerome as a Cardinal in the Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna.
In the second row, the two heads of an old woman are copied from a drawing, now attributed to Artus Wolffort (Paris, Louvre) which appear in numerous Rubensian compositions, and a figure study, attributed to Rubens’s workshop, recently sold at Wesschler’s in Washington (18 March 2016, lot 184). The charming heads of a young girl and boy in the centre find no direct parallel with any Rubens paintings (though do bear a passing resemblance to the Vienna Christ Child and the Infant St John the Baptist with Angels). The existence of another, less capable version of the composition by an artist working in Rubens’s circle (ex-Sotheby’s, Olympia, 8 July 2003, lot 332), suggests, perhaps, the existence of a now-lost prototype.
Next to these studies is a particularly accomplished study of the head and shoulders of a man. Rubens made numerous studies of this model, using him for the figure of Joseph of Arimathea in the Antwerp Descent from the Cross. The present study, however, relates to the shepherd dressed in blue at the left of Rubens’s Adoration of the Shepherds in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen. The same model, seen from behind, appears again in the lower left of the present work, this time taken from the left-most figure in the left wing of Rubens’s Miraculous Draft of Fishes triptych in Malines. The final two studies, at the lower centre of the panel, show a man with a long brown beard, the first of which relates to a portrait sketch, again by an artist working in Rubens’s circle, sold at Christie’s, Amsterdam on 14 November 2012, lot 88.
Following his training in Antwerp and several years working in Italy, Rubens returned to Flanders in 1608 and set-up a workshop in his native city. By the mid-1610s, he was an established and successful painter, maintaining a busy and highly successful studio made up of apprentices and journeymen painters (fully trained artists who did not possess a studio of their own). At this date, Rubens began painting studies of heads to keep in the workshop to serve as models for compositions. These head-studies allowed the artist to regulate the quality of his assistants’ work and also to save time from inventing new figure types. Many of these studies would likely have been prepared for specific paintings, but were retained in the workshop where they could continue to be used and adapted by the master and his studio (J. Held, The Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens: A Critical Catalogue, Princeton and London, 1980, I, p. 597).
After his death in 1640, the contents of Rubens’s studio was sold, including ‘une quantité des visages au vif, sur toile, & fonds de bois, tant de Mons. Rubens’ (J. Held, loc. cit). The present work, dating to the end of the 17th century, was painted by an artist working within Rubens’s circle, who was evidently familiar his compositions, working practices and techniques. The panel’s thin brown ground was the standard technique used by the older master for his sketches and the carefully observed figure studies (almost all of which re-use existing Rubensian prototypes) are painted in a free, assured manner, closely reminiscent of Rubens’s own style. The curling hair of the man at the top-left of the panel, and of the young boy in the centre, is particularly successfully rendered in only a few swift brushstrokes and, in the profile study of the old woman, great pains have been taken in the rendering of her wrinkled skin. Panels of this type are rare and provide a fascinating means of better understanding the dissemination of designs from the Rubens workshop. This picture would, presumably, have occupied an important place in its painter’s workshop providing invaluable sources for a variety of compositions and figures.
Some of the studies are directly copied from works by Rubens and his studio, while the prototypes of others are somewhat more difficult to discern. The first two studies, both of the same man, are in fact taken from two studies by Jacob Jordeans, formerly with Derek Johns Gallery, though that in the uppermost left corner bears similarities to the St. Christopher in Rubens’s Descent from the Cross triptych (Antwerp, Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal) and the pipe-player in the Drunken Silenus supported by Satyrs (London, National Gallery, executed in Rubens’s studio with the assistance of Van Dyck). The next two studies show a man with dark, greying hair and Roman nose, the right of which directly copies Rubens’s Portrait of a Man of circa 1615 (on loan to the Yale University Art Gallery), reused two years later for the Head of One of the Three Kings: Melchior, The Assyrian King (Washington, National Gallery of Art). The head of a cardinal at the upper right of the present panel replicates Rubens’s St Jerome as a Cardinal in the Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna.
In the second row, the two heads of an old woman are copied from a drawing, now attributed to Artus Wolffort (Paris, Louvre) which appear in numerous Rubensian compositions, and a figure study, attributed to Rubens’s workshop, recently sold at Wesschler’s in Washington (18 March 2016, lot 184). The charming heads of a young girl and boy in the centre find no direct parallel with any Rubens paintings (though do bear a passing resemblance to the Vienna Christ Child and the Infant St John the Baptist with Angels). The existence of another, less capable version of the composition by an artist working in Rubens’s circle (ex-Sotheby’s, Olympia, 8 July 2003, lot 332), suggests, perhaps, the existence of a now-lost prototype.
Next to these studies is a particularly accomplished study of the head and shoulders of a man. Rubens made numerous studies of this model, using him for the figure of Joseph of Arimathea in the Antwerp Descent from the Cross. The present study, however, relates to the shepherd dressed in blue at the left of Rubens’s Adoration of the Shepherds in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen. The same model, seen from behind, appears again in the lower left of the present work, this time taken from the left-most figure in the left wing of Rubens’s Miraculous Draft of Fishes triptych in Malines. The final two studies, at the lower centre of the panel, show a man with a long brown beard, the first of which relates to a portrait sketch, again by an artist working in Rubens’s circle, sold at Christie’s, Amsterdam on 14 November 2012, lot 88.