Rubens was the most high profile, the most prolific and the most successful artist of his generation. European monarchs queued up, figuratively speaking, for his works. Charles I of England failed to persuade him to come to London as his court painter because Rubens, quite simply, had more important clients to attend to. What made him so famous and his public works so desirable was his ability to produce huge, lavish, dynamic and rhetorical tours de force, often in the service of Roman Catholicism or of royal or aristocratic dynasty.
What, then, makes this drawing special is that it was done in private. As such it’s something of a privilege to see his work in more intimate surroundings, without the flourishes, the cartouches, the theatrically swirling draperies. There are no saints or mythological gods in sight but a humble, everyday glimpse of a tree trunk and tangled undergrowth. It’s quite a large drawing, if you imagine its dimensions, but I don’t think it was done as a sketch for a larger work. If that’s the case then it has to have been made for its own sake, for the sheer beauty and importance of an overlooked piece of Flemish countryside. Maybe he made it as a form of escape from his professional obligations towards institutional ideology.
I also wonder if Rubens made it outside in front of his subject matter? If he did and if it was autumn, did his hands get cold? Maybe he used the chalk outside and then worked it up with ink in the warmth of his studio. The inscription in Flemish bottom right reads ‘fallen leaves and in some places fresh green grass pops through’. I’m reminded of that great line from Autolycus the clown in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale: ‘For the red blood reigns in the winter’s pale’ and the consoling thought that in nature even as things die new life emerges.
