|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Revered, Reviled Rubens
| Article
# : |
12106 |
|
|
Section : |
THE ARTS
|
| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1994 |
3,525 Words |
| Author
: |
Susan Fegley Osmond
Susan Fegley Osmond is an editor in the Arts section of The
World & I. |
Among all the great figures in the history of art, few have provoked such intense reactions--such vehement condemnation or such rapturous praise--as Peter Paul Rubens.
Sir Joshua Reynolds called him "a god descended from the heavens." Van Gogh sought to emulate his "open-hearted way of painting, his working with the simplest of means," and loosened his own brushwork and brightened his palette as a result. Cezanne kept a photo of The Apotheosis of Henry IV displayed in his studio for inspiration. Delacroix, who made many copies of Rubens' works, extolled him as "that Homer of painting, the father of warmth and enthusiasm in art, where he puts all others in the shade, not perhaps because of his perfection in any one direction, but because of that hidden force--that life and spirit--which he put into everything he did."
Rubens has had many detractors through the years, but none so virulent as Americans. Thomas Eakins declared, "Rubens is the nastiest, most vulgar, noisy painter that ever lived. ... His people must all be in the most violent action, must use the strength of Hercules if a little watch is to be wound up." Eakins added that he would not be sorry if all Rubens' paintings were burned. Writer Henry James, somewhat less extreme in his pronouncements, wrote, "There are fine painters and coarse painters, and Rubens belonged to the latter category; he reigned in it with magnificent supremacy. ... His intentions had often great energy, but they had very little profundity"
Perhaps it is these latter views that provide in part the reason why no major retrospective has ever been granted Rubens in the United States. However, The Age of Rubens, an exhibition that opened last autumn at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and is at the Toledo Museum of Art through April 24, seeks to rectify that deficiency--or at least to open the door to greater public awareness of the Flemish artist and his time. The exhibition is, in fact, not a Rubens retrospective but the first general survey in an American museum of Flemish art of the seventeenth century. As such, it necessarily casts the spotlight upon Rubens, who was not only the leading artist of Flanders, but the preeminent painter of his day.
The Flemish Baroque
The show is composed of 132 paintings, of which 33 are by Rubens (though quite a few of these are collaborations). The rest are by about forty other artists, some of whom were apprentices in Rubens' large studio. The
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
