Sir Peter Paul Rubens

Georges Bourgarel, Paris;
sale, Bern, Gutekunst & Klipstein, 22 November 1956, lot 272;
Private Collection, England

Laid down and hinged to the mount at the upper margin. A separate strip of paper has been added to the left margin. Overall in good condition. Some light brown staining around the edges of the sheet and a few tiny scattered fox marks. Chalk remains fresh and vibrant. Sold in a carved and gilded frame.
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This extremely refined, carefully observed study relates to the figure of a putto at the top left of Rubens’s major 1618 altarpiece, The Virgin and Child, surrounded by the Holy Innocents (fig. 1; Paris, Musée du Louvre).  Though the figure in the drawing corresponds very closely with its painted counterpart, even down to the fact that neither arm is visible, it gives the strong impression of being a rapid study of a real child, made from life, rather than an image of an ethereal putto.  This, together with the fact that the face in particular is much more naturalistic than in the painting, as well as the apparent alteration in the positioning of the child’s right foot, argues strongly for this being a study, almost certainly made from life, that Rubens used in the creation of the painting.

It is entirely consistent with Rubens’s working method during this period for him to take a rather specific life study and incorporate it more or less exactly into one or more paintings.  A good example of this is the very spontaneous black chalk study of a standing child (or, to be more precise, of a small child supported on its feet by the hands of an invisible adult), in the Albertina, Vienna.¹  The child in question was probably the artist’s son Albert, born on 5 June 1614, and if so, the drawing must have been made around a year later.  Rubens then used it as the basis for the Christ Child in his Holy Family with Saint Elizabeth and the Infant Saint John the Baptist, in the Wallace Collection, London, painted circa 1616, and also adapted the figure slightly in his 1619-20 Virgin with Jesus and the Infant Saint John the Baptist, in Kassel.²  Other studies by Rubens of his own children also served the dual purpose of recording the much-loved offspring’s appearance, and providing the artist with a figure to use in a painting: for example the famous study of Nicholas Rubens wearing a coral necklace of around 1619, also in the Albertina³, though surely made as a portrait study in its own right, was also used as the basis for the head of the Christ Child in the above-mentioned Kassel painting.  

These other studies of children are both slightly different from the present work in terms of handling – the first is more rugged, the second more extensively and carefully hatched and shaded – but like all truly great draughtsmen Rubens did not adhere to a simple formula in his drawings, and throughout his life, drawings of a similar period often demonstrate striking differences in technique and handling, reflecting more than anything else their function.  Other studies are known from the period around 1618 that closely parallel the technique seen here, with its rapid and elegant cursive lines and shading that combines bold hatching and softer, more delicate touches.  One of the most closely comparable is another drawing in the Albertina, a black and white chalk study of a seated old man, which, though unconnected with any known painting, must also date from 1618-20.⁴

Both a beautiful image and a fascinating document of Rubens’s working method, this recently rediscovered drawing is an important addition to the corpus of Rubens’s works on paper. While the attribution of works to Rubens is rarely unanimous amongst modern scholars, the present drawing is accepted as an autograph work by all of the Rubens specialists who have seen it at first hand.  One, judging from a digital image, has suggested that the drawing is substantially later in date, but the forensic paper historian Peter Bower has confirmed from his first hand inspection that the paper is consistent with a dating of circa 1618.

^1.  Inv (17 639); A.-M. Logan and M.C. Plomp, Pieter Paul Rubens, The Drawings, exh. cat., New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005, pp. 192-3, no. 59

^2.  Logan/Plomp, op. cit., p. 238, fig. 126

^3.  Inv. 17650; Logan/Plomp, op. cit., pp. 237-8, no. 81

^4.  Vienna, Albertina, inv. 8296; Logan/Plomp, op. cit., pp. 204-5, no. 65