A new Rubens discovery in Oslo
January 16 2012
Picture: National Gallery, Oslo
Rubens scholar Dr Nico Van Hout has published a newly discovered early sketch by Rubens in an excellent article in the Rubensbulletin (the image in the bulletin can be magnified in great detail in pdf). The sketch, which belongs to the National Gallery in Oslo, has for many years been catalogued simply as 'Flemish School'. Van Hout, however, is convinced that it is by Rubens, and dates it to 1610-11. He believes it may relate to Rubens later painting of 1618, the Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich (below), as a ‘first draft’.
The picture has had a chequered attributional history. Julius Held, the late guru of all Rubens sketches, believed it was ‘not autograph’. He noted that ‘the gamut of colours is darker than is normal with Rubens, and the paint film lacks the characteristic use of delicate glazes’. Van Hout argues that some of the ‘darkness’, such as in areas of the background, is due to later over-paint and the fact that the sketch appears to be painted over another composition. He also suggests that the original study has been worked up into a finished picture, and this may be why it has lost some of the fluidity of a normal Rubens oil sketch.
I can see elements of both arguments here. The brushwork is first class, and the expressions of the male figures are very Rubensian, as is the drawing of the horse. On the other hand (and obviously I am far from being an expert on Rubens and his studies), the handling of areas such as the flesh tones in the daughters does seem to me to be a little unusual. A layer of darker than usual ground (Rubens studies are usually on a pale imprimatur) gives the flesh tones a grey and slightly heavier quality than the deft and rapid application one might expect, and the face of the central daughter might almost be described as laboured. And perhaps the overall composition is overly lyrical at the expense of the subject’s narrative power, something Rubens so often focuses on, as seen in the 1618 Rape. For example, in the Oslo study the figures are finely arranged in a harmonious, rising cascade from left to right, which gives rise to a very pleasing composition – but it gives no obvious explanation as to how the figures got there. They seem to be floating, which is something noted by Elizabeth McGrath in her volume of the Rubens Corpus Subjects from History, where she did not identify the sketch as being by Rubens. In the 1618 picture there is no such ambiguity - the daughters are clearly being hoisted up by the twin brothers Castor and Pollux, called the Dioscuri. Perhaps this is why Rubens abandoned the earlier composition. Hopefully more technical evidence will be available; it would be good to see an x-ray of the panel to see what lies beneath.
The composition is known in five other works, including this drawing in the Musee Conde ascribed to Rubens but not by him, and intriguingly a panel previously called ‘Van Dyck’ in the Roselius Collection in Bremen. I'll see if I can find an illustration of this.
