Major Rediscoveries in the Old Masters: Paintings - Drawings - Sculpture
TheOld Masters: Paintings - Drawings - Sculpture sale brings together paintings by major figures of French art, including Jean-Honoré Fragonard, François Boucher and Jean-Baptiste Pater, as well as European masters such as Ribera, Juan van der Hamen y León, Jan I Van Kessel and Cristoforo Munari. This selection includes several important rediscoveries, foremost among them Immaculée Conception by François Boucher (€300,000-500,000). A major work from the artist's mature period demonstrates the freedom Boucher achieved in relation to academic conventions. Recently rediscovered, the painting has been linked to a drawing by the artist in the Louvre and to the Assomption in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland.
La fête du village by Sir David Wilkie (1785-1841) is another previously unpublished work featured in the sale. Rooted in the tradition of 17th-century Flemish genre painting, this composition is revealed as a preparatory sketch for the celebrated painting The Alehouse Door, now in the Tate Britain, London, which made Wilkie the first living artist to be represented in the British national collections at the National Gallery. While the Tate Britain painting was acquired by John Julius Angerstein (1735-1823), the present sketch appears to have been retained by the artist and presented to George Watson (1767-1837), President of the Royal Scottish Academy, as attested by a letter from Wilkie preserved on the reverse of the picture (€20,000-30,000).
Unseen on the market for a century, an enchanting Tête de jeune femme by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) has not been publicly exhibited since 1957 (€400,000-500,000). Fragonard's characteristic virtuosity and freedom of execution are fully expressed in this portrait, whose palette recalls Rembrandt'sPortrait d'Hendrickje Stoffels.
Sculpture is represented by several works from the collection of Ambassador J. William Middendorf II, including a figure of an apostle created in Limoges at the end of the 12th century (€20,000-30,000), as well as a magnificent cast of Cheval au passage, attributed to Antonio Susini after Giambologna (€150,000-250,000).
The Old Master Drawings section is composed primarily of works from the French school, notably an early drawing by François Boucher depicting Travail aux champs, a red chalk drawing by Hubert Robert, and a watercolour by Eugène Isabey representing l'Embarquement de mille volontaires sous la direction de Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882) à Gênes, le 5 mai 1860.
This fall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany, a major exhibition exploring the creative process behind some of Tiffany Studios' most celebrated works. On view from October 22, 2026, through February 7, 2027, the exhibition brings together nearly 120 works from the Museum’s collection—along with a select group of key loans—to examine the artistic range of Louis Comfort Tiffany and the collaborative studio that produced significant works of American decorative art. A major loan from the Chrysler Museum of Art reunites its monumental stained-glass window, Woman in a Pergola with Wisteria (1911), with the original wisteria transoms designed for the work. Recently discovered in a private home in Arizona, the transoms make possible the ensemble's first presentation together in at least half a century.
“The Met’s unparalleled collection of design drawings from the studios of Louis C. Tiffany reveals how some of the most iconic works of American decorative art came to life,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “The exhibition illuminates the artistry, innovation, and collaboration at the heart of Tiffany studios, while offering new insights into the cultural and aesthetic ambitions of the Gilded Age.”
“This exhibition builds on decades of conservation and sustained study of The Met’s extraordinary holdings—the largest collection of Tiffany design drawings anywhere,” said Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, The Met’s Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Curator of American Decorative Arts. “As these works have been conserved to their full beauty, they reveal the richness and complexity of the studio’s creative process. The reunion of two major windows side by side with their original design drawings offers a particularly powerful moment, allowing visitors to see the transformation of an idea into a luminous work of art.”
Spanning the early 1890s through the 1920s, Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany highlights the extraordinary breadth and ambition from the studios of Louis C. Tiffany, from stained-glass windows and lamps to mosaics, enamels, textiles, and interiors created for private homes, houses of worship, theaters, and public buildings during America’s Gilded Age. These rarely seen works on paper—from quick working sketches to luminous watercolor presentation drawings—offer an unprecedented behind-the-scenes view of the collaborative artistic process that shaped the studios of Louis C. Tiffany commissions across the United States as well as in Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and Switzerland.
Many of the drawings on view document works that have since been lost, altered, or never realized, offering invaluable information about Louis C. Tiffany’s artistic vision and the breadth of his studio’s output. Organized thematically across three galleries, the exhibition explores designs for domestic interiors, ecclesiastical settings, and public and commercial commissions alongside Tiffany’s pioneering work in lighting. Select loans—including stained-glass windows, lamps, and decorative objects—will be presented in dialogue with their corresponding drawings, allowing visitors to trace the transformation from concept to finished work.
A central focus of the exhibition is the collaborative nature of Tiffany studios, which brought together a diverse group of designers, many of whom were historically uncredited. The presentation will highlight the contributions of not just Tiffany but other key figures, among them émigré and women designers—British-trained Frederick Wilson and Swiss-born Jacob Holzer as well as Agnes Northrop, Clara Driscoll, and Julia Munson—while shedding light on the broader network of artists and artisans whose work shaped Tiffany’s distinctive aesthetic. In addition, Designing the Gilded Age will examine the conservation of these fragile works on paper, with interpretive materials and digital components revealing the discoveries made through decades of study and preservation.
The Gilded Age, a period of unprecedented economic growth in late 19th- and early 20th-century America, produced the major cultural institutions of New York and the nation, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, founded in 1870. Against the backdrop of that formative period, the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany flourished. Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany also situates Tiffany’s work within the broader cultural and economic context of this period that was marked by rapid industrial growth and an expanding market for luxury goods. The drawings reveal the role of design in shaping immersive environments—from domestic interiors to sacred and civic spaces across the United States and abroad. Exhibition Credits The exhibition is organized by Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, The Met’s Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Curator of American Decorative Arts, with Barbara Veith, Research Associate, The American Wing.
Exhibition Catalogue
A fully illustrated catalogue by Frelinghuysen and other authors, published by The Met, will accompany the exhibition.
This in-depth study goes behind the scenes of some of the era’s most iconic designs, presenting 150 rarely seen drawings by the artists who worked in Louis C. Tiffany's studios.
IMAGES
Tiffany Studios (American, 1902–32). Design for interior, First Presbyterian Church, Poughkeepsie, New York (detail), ca. 1906-08. Transparent and opaque watercolor, and graphite on transparent paper, mounted on paper, 17 ¾ × 25 ½ in. (45.1 × 64.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Walter Hoving and Julia T. Weld Gifts and Dodge Fund, 1967 (67.654.7)
To mark the 150th anniversary of the Alte Nationalgalerie, the special
presentation “Across Epochs” brings together works from the “long
19th century” and the late 20th century. In ten rooms spread across
all three floors of the building, works by artists such as Andreas
Gursky, Sarah Lucas, Joan Miró, and Andy Warhol encounter art
from the 19th century. Unconventional juxtapositions offer new perspectives on familiar works and explore the question of what art is
and can be.
When the Nationalgalerie opened on Museumsinsel Berlin in 1876, it was
a venue for contemporary art. Today, the Alte Nationalgalerie serves as
the main building of the Nationalgalerie and is dedicated to the art of the
long 19th century. All six buildings of the Nationalgalerie are linked by a
jointly managed collection that spans from the late 18th century to the
present day. “Across Epochs” brings this continuum to light through selected works within the historical collection presentation and invites visitors to
engage in comparative, associative viewing.
Dialogues Across Epochs and Genres
Still lifes, self-portraits, and portraits; abstraction and figuration; painting,
photography, and sculpture come together in surprising constellations.
Gotthard Graubner’s (1930–2013) intense, color-saturated forms encounter new forms of perception found in Impressionism and PostImpressionism. The juxtaposition of Andy Warhol’s (1928–1987) “Diamond Dust Shoes” with a still life by Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) demonstrates how, over the course of more than a century, the genre has become
a testing ground for the interplay of form, color, and surface.
Concepts of self and societal role models are also reflected across different eras: The self-portrait by painter Sabine Lepsius (1864–1942), who
had to hold her own in a male-dominated art world, is juxtaposed with a
photographic self-portrait by British contemporary artist Sarah Lucas
(*1962). In a casual, masculine-sounding pose, Lucas looks defiantly past
the camera while smoking.
Another dialogue connects Adolph Menzel’s epoch-making “Iron Rolling
Mill (Modern Cyclops)” (1872–1875) with Andreas Gursky’s (*1955) “Singapore Bourse II” (1997). Here, realist painting meets a condensed artistic
depiction of the reality of the stock market. In very different ways, both
works examine the world of work, economic processes, and the possibilities for their artistic representation.
The exhibition is spread across all three floors of the Alte Nationalgalerie
in specific areas. An accompanying audio guide explores the connections
that span different eras in greater depth: artists, directors, collectors, and
conservators present selected dialogues between works.
Carnegie Mellon researchers are using explainable AI to uncover patterns hidden in centuries old paintings, to give experts a new tool for investigating who may have painted them
A few hundred years ago, authenticating whether a painting was created by a master like Rembrandt, or a talented copy-cat, was dependent only on the trained eye of an expert. Then, new tools like X-rays and infrared imaging allowed curators to see beneath the surface of a painting and analyze details invisible to the human eye.
Now, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are exploring how artificial intelligence can work alongside human experts to add another layer of evidence towards the unsolved mysteries in art attribution.
Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and led by mechanical engineering professors Phil LeDuc and Jon Cagan, alongside alumni Andrés Arias-Rosales and renowned Rembrandt scholar Arthur Wheelock Jr., the researchers have developed an AI framework that can examine a painting for visual patterns associated with the work of Rembrandt to help experts make the final call on a painting’s authenticity.
Attributing a painting to an artist like Rembrandt is no easy task. Experts consider everything from historical documents to the artist’s subject matter, his varied styles of painting throughout the course of his career, including brushwork and the types of paints and supports he used. On top of that, they must keep in mind that Rembrandt’s pupils and assistants may have sometimes painted alongside him, and that later restorers may have changed and added elements to Rembrandt’s compositions. To help them in their analyses, experts also consider technical information gained from such examination techniques as X-radiography, infra-reflectography, and X-ray fluorescence analysis.
For an art collector, or insurer, the stakes are high. A true Rembrandt painting is a piece of history and cultural identity. To get it right, the engineering team learned from Wheelock, who spent more than forty years as a curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and is an internationally recognized expert on Rembrandt and Dutch art.
“Working with him was a dream of mine,” Arias-Rosales said. “We wanted to understand Rembrandt through the eyes of a world-class expert, then understand it through the eyes of 'the machine', our AI approach, and bring those together.” Prior to diving into developing the new AI tools, it was crucial for the team to first go to the National Gallery of Art, DC, to study Rembrandt paintings and engage in in-depth discussions about the artist, his style, technique, and the questions and challenges surrounding his work.
The team then asked whether an AI approach could distinguish Rembrandt from paintings by artists whose work resembles that of the master. The team carefully curated a dataset of over thirteen hundred high resolution digitized images of paintings including 311 Rembrandts that were used for the AI analysis.
The AI model learned to identify statistical patterns across characteristics such as edges, color, light distribution, and visible brushstrokes to produce a score estimating how strongly a painting aligns with the patterns shown in Rembrandt’s work. When the model was highly confident, it classified paintings with 95.8% accuracy.
“Experts need to understand how the AI model/algorithm came to its decision,” said Cagan. “That is critical in successful human-AI collaboration, so we needed to make sure the algorithm could expose which areas of the painting influenced the algorithm’s conclusion.”
To do so, the AI approach classifies a painting as either Rembrandt or not, provides carefully calibrated probabilities and confidence scores, and generates visualizations that emphasize the painting areas and details that had the strongest influence in the AI-based classification. This becomes a useful tool for curators as they can focus on specific details within the painting that they may have otherwise overlooked. For example, if the AI was repeatedly highlighting the hands with a low score, suggesting that they likely weren’t painted by Rembrandt, the researchers can digitally remove them from consideration and ask the model to classify it again. If the hands disappear, and there is high confidence in a Rembrandt attribution, a curator may consider whether the hands were painted by a Rembrandt student instead.
“The most exciting cases are the ambiguous ones,” said Arias-Rosales. “We wanted to do more than bring opaque or simplistic answers to Wheelock; we wanted to bring him more questions and point to potentially interesting details for him to consider and help solve mysteries of art history.”
The team has already tested their AI on a real mystery. In 2024 a painting titled Portrait of a Girl was discovered in an attic in Maine, and later sold for $1.41 million because of its possible connection to Rembrandt. When the CMU model analyzed the image, it determined an 84.7% confidence that the painting was a Rembrandt. “These results aren’t an authentication, they are a statistical observation meant to be considered alongside historical research, material analysis, X-rays, and other tools with the final decision made by human experts,” said LeDuc.
Eventually, the team hopes this tool could become an interactive application for museums, curators and other art professionals. With Rembrandt as the test case, they believe it could be adapted to investigate other artists as well.
For LeDuc this project underlines how Carnegie Mellon’s interdisciplinary culture shines.
“Not everywhere will they bring together engineering, design, and art history to solve intriguing problems,” he said. “It’s such a CMU thing. We like to try to help with exciting fields in many different directions”
The Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg (MFA) is
showing its support for the Tampa Bay Rays in a big-league way. It’s putting a Monet in play.
As the Tampa Bay Rays and the Milwaukee Brewers face off in the World Series, the MFA and the
Milwaukee Art Museum have agreed to a friendly wager. Each institution is backing its team with
a beloved painting by Claude Monet. The museum on the losing side will send its painting on loan
to the winning team’s hometown for a victory lap in the galleries.
If the Rays bring home the championship, St. Petersburg will welcome Milwaukee’s Waterloo
Bridge, Sunlight Effect. If the Brewers prevail, the MFA will lend Houses of Parliament: Effect of
Fog, London to its Wisconsin counterpart.
A leader of the Impressionist movement and one of the most influential painters of the
nineteenth century, Monet transformed how artists depict light and color. The winning city won't
just take home a World Series title. Its museum will bring a Monet masterpiece to town, giving
the community more world-class art to enjoy.
Kim Sajet, Donna and Donald Baumgartner Director of the Milwaukee Art Museum, initiated the
wager. “When I moved to Milwaukee, I became a part of the Brew Crew. They're the best team
in baseball, and I’m backing them with one of our most beloved paintings. Two Monets will look
incredible in our galleries. Klaudio, consider this your invitation to visit Milwaukee. Go Brewers!”
“We admire Kim’s enthusiasm, but we think Milwaukee’s Monet would enjoy a little Florida
vacation,” said Klaudio Rodriguez, Executive Director & Chief Executive Officer of the Museum of
Fine Arts, St. Petersburg. “We’re backing the Rays all the way, and we’re ready to welcome
Milwaukee’s masterpiece to St. Petersburg. Let's see Milwaukee put its Monet where its mouth
is.”
Houses of Parliament: Effect of Fog, London is typically located in the MFA’s Collection Gallery,
which is temporarily closed until November 21 during the reinstallation for Art Unbound.
However, the museum has put the piece on view in the upstairs gallery in support of the Rays.
“Although our collection galleries are closed, we wanted to share the Monet during this rivalry.
For visiting Brewers fans, it might be their only chance to see it,” said Hazel and William Hough
Chief Curator Dr. Stanton Thomas.
While high-profile friendly wagers involving artwork are a popular trend among art institutions
during championship events, this is a first for the MFA. The wager involves a temporary loan;
ownership of each painting will remain with its museum. Loan and exhibition dates will be
announced following the series.
Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926), Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect, ca. 1900 (dated 1903). Oil on canvas. Milwaukee Art Museum, Bequest of Mrs. Albert T. Friedmann, M1950.3. Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg
Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926), Houses of Parliament: Effect of Fog, London, 1904. Oil on canvas. 32 1/2 × 36 1/2 in. Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Partial gift of Charles C. and Margaret Stevenson Henderson and Museum purchase 1979.5
For the first time in fifty years, the Kupferstichkabinett is once again
presenting an exhibition featuring more than 100 outstanding drawings by 28 Flemish artists from its collection. The drawings, which
are often astonishingly painterly and powerful, were created between
1570 and 1650 and offer fascinating insights into the creative process, as they were rarely produced as an end in themselves but rather as preparatory works for a piece to be executed. The impressive
range of subjects extends from Christian and allegorical scenes,
through mythological and historical motifs, to genre scenes, portraits, still lives and landscapes.
In the 15th and 16th century, one of Europe’s most important artistic centres emerged around the cities of Antwerp, Brussels, Mechelen, Bruges
and Ghent. Brussels, the residence of the Spanish governors, was the focal point of political and religious power. With its harbour, Antwerp developed into Europe’s leading trading hub, handling grain, textiles, iron goods
and spices.
Economic prosperity gave rise to a flourishing market for art
and luxury goods, while the urban bourgeoisie emerged as a new, selfconfident class of buyers. This, in turn, led to the specialisation of painters’ workshops, which produced small cabinet paintings of remarkable detail and painterly refinement to meet the growing demand.
Together with
cities such as Mechelen, Ghent and Bruges, the provinces of Flanders
and Brabant became strongholds of exquisite artistic production: finest
lace, valuable tapestries, sculptures and paintings were created here for
aristocratic, ecclesiastical and bourgeois patrons.
At the same time, the period between 1550 and 1650 was marked by continuous conflicts between the major European powers and opposing religious camps. The balance of power within Europe was in a constant state
of flux, revealing certain parallels with the processes of globalisation in the
21st century.
The seventeen provinces of the Habsburg Netherlands – an area corresponding to present-day Belgium, Luxembourg, northern France and the
Netherlands – were under Spanish rule.
Increasing centralisation, the curtailment of traditional privileges and the intensification of the Counter-Reformation led to unrest from the 1560s onwards, culminating in the outbreak of the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648). In the course of the war, the
seven northern Protestant provinces (today’s Netherlands) gained their independence, while the ten southern provinces remained under Spanish
rule.
The tolerant policies and artistic patronage of Archduke Albert and
Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia gave rise to an economic boom during the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609–1621), encouraging a cultural resurgence in the region.
In this period of tension, a new, powerful visual language characterised by
passionate emotion, vibrant colour and dynamic compositions developed
between 1580 and 1660.
The exhibition revolves around works by the
three great protagonists of the Antwerp Baroque: captivating drawings by
Peter Paul Rubens, powerfully sensual works by Jacob Jordaens, and
bold sketches by Anthony van Dyck. Shown alongside the work of predecessors and teachers, workshop assistants and contemporaries, they reveal a dense network of professional relationships.
Peter Paul Rubens – painter, collector, humanist and diplomat – was the
dominant artistic figure of his age. Several of the artists represented in the
exhibition trained in his workshop, and almost all collaborated with him in
one way or another. Following his return from Italy in 1609, Rubens consolidated his reputation as Antwerp’s foremost history painter through a
series of large-scale altarpieces and history paintings distinguished by luminous colours and a dramatic new style.
Like Rubens, Jacob Jordaens
trained with Adam van Noort. He assisted Rubens with major commissions, including the mythological cycle of more than one hundred paintings created for the King of Spain. Jordaens achieved success early in his
career and, following Rubens’s death, became Antwerp’s leading painter.
Anthony van Dyck was regarded as an artistic prodigy. At the age of sixteen, he entered Rubens’s workshop as a fully trained painter, absorbed
his master’s creative approach, copied, drew and painted extensively, and
gradually developed a distinctive artistic style that, while initially rooted in
Rubens’s example, soon became independent. From 1621 onwards he
pursued his own path and, in 1632, was invited to London as court painter
and an outstanding portraitist.
The works of these three artists are complemented by a small introductory
selection of earlier works by important predecessors, including two of Rubens’s teachers. These are followed by sheets by artists such as Jan
Brueghel the Elder, David Teniers the Younger and Frans Snyders, some
of whom were close friends of Rubens or collaborated with him.
Also included are figure studies by Adriaen Brouwer and Sebastian Vrancx, who,
like Rubens and Jordaens, studied under Adam van Noort; compositions
by pupils of Rubens such as Abraham van Diepenbeeck and Erasmus
Quellinus the Younger; and works by artists who worked as engravers for
Rubens, including Pieter de Jode.
The exhibition concludes with landscape drawings by David Vinckboons, Lucas van Uden, Lodewijk de
Vadder and Jacques d’Arthois.
EXHIBITION TEXTS
The exhibition revolves around virtuosic drawings by the three great
protagonists Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, and Anthony van Dyck.
Shown alongside the work of predecessors, assistants, and
contemporaries, they reveal a dense network of professional
relationships. Many artists specialized in particular themes and
collaborated in varying constellations. Almost all the drawings in the
exhibition were created in the context of larger projects; as rapid initial
sketches, compositional designs, or studies for paintings, engravings, or
tapestries, they help bring the creative process to life even today.
Precursors and Pioneers: Early Drawings
The exhibition begins with drawings by artists of the generation prior to
Peter Paul Rubens, including preliminary drawings for engravings still
indebted to late Mannerism. From the mid-sixteenth century on, printmaking played an important role
in the reproduction and dissemination of motifs. A little later, Rubens
would use it as a marketing tool to publicize his inventions throughout all of
Europe. With the publishing houses of Hieronymus Cock, Christoffel
Plantin, and Philipp Galle, Rubens’s home city of Antwerp had developed
into the most important center of the printing industry.
Peter Paul Rubens came from an Antwerp patrician family. He began his
training with Tobias Verhaecht in 1589 and later studied with Adam van
Noort and Otto van Veen. Two sheets from this early period are on view,
including a drawing by Rubens after a bronze statuette. Copying was a
part of training, and it remained a lifelong drawing practice for Rubens. He
copied paintings, sculptures, and prints, building a storehouse of motifs for
later use in other works.
Painter, Humanist, Diplomat: Peter Paul Rubens
In 1600, Rubens traveled to Italy, where he studied works from antiquity
as well as those of Raphael and Michelangelo. He served as court painter
to Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua until 1608. In 1609, after his return
to Antwerp, he was appointed court painter by the Spanish governors,
ArchduchessIsabella Clara Eugenia and Archduke Albert. As a diplomat,
Rubens represented the Spanish crownin negotiations with England,
France, and the northern provinces of the Netherlands.
Rubens received extensive commissions from courtly and ecclesiastical
patrons and ran a workshop with numerous assistants. From 1619 on, he
produced engravings and woodcuts of his own compositions, strictly
supervising their execution. The prints sold exceptionally well and
significantly enhanced his fame. The well-educated painter amassed a
collection of sculptures and drawings and corresponded with scholars and
patrons throughout all of Europe.
His drawings, around forty of which are held in the Kupferstichkabinett,
were created not as ends in themselves, but in preparation for paintings.
As working material, they were neither signed by the artist nor made
available to the public. Rubens’sexpressive studies and designs reflect
the entire thematic range of his oeuvre.
Virtuoso of Color: Jacob Jordaens
Jacob Jordaens is known above all for his genre scenes of merry
companies and peasant life. Yet as a skilled history painter, he also
created ambitious classical-antique, biblical, and mythological scenes for
educated audiences and noble and ecclesiastical patrons.
Jordaens, who unlike Rubens and van Dyck never left the Netherlands,
was the son of a cloth merchant and was apprenticed to the painter Adam
van Noortin 1607. In 1615 he was accepted into the Guild ofSt. Luke, and
by ten years later was the head of a successful workshop. He
occasionally assistedRubens with large commissions for patrons such as
the city of Antwerp (1634–35) or King Philip IV of Spain (1637–38). After
Rubens's death, Jordaens became the most important painter in
Antwerp.
As a draftsman, he was extraordinarily independent.The exhibition
includes powerful figure studies as well as brilliantly colored designs for
paintings or tapestries that could be shown to potential clients. In these
carefully developed compositional studies, Jordaens proves himself an
outstanding virtuoso of color.
Familiar Landscapes: Jan Brueghel the Elder
Jan Brueghel the Elder ran a successful workshop that served the
growing demand from the bourgeoismiddle class for small-scale cabinet
pictures charac-terized by a wealth of detail and painterly refinement.
Brueghel received commissions from the Spanish governors in Brussels,
whose gardens and menageries he visited and studied for his flower
paintings and images of Paradise.
Brueghel was a close friend of Rubens, and the two collaborated on
motifs such as the popular image of the Madonna in a garland of flowers,
with Rubens painting the figures and Brueghel the flowers.
Inspired by the drawings of his father Pieter Bruegelas well as by
impressions from his visit to Italy in 1590–96 and his artistic exchange
with the painter Paul Bril, he made an important contribution to the
development of the landscape genre. He produced realistic views of his
native countryside, showing it with a low horizon in atmospheric light. He
skillfullyemployed rivers or paths to direct the viewer’s gaze into depth and
captured the expansiveness of the flat landscape. His precise drawings
are replete with narrative details.
Daily Life and Leisure: David Teniers the Younger
David Teniers the Younger is known primarilyfor his genre scenes, which
show village festivals, inns, and elegant companies and capture the
everydaylife and amusements of the country and the city. Teniers trained
in the workshop of his father and in 1637 married Anna, the seventeenyear-old daughterof the deceased Jan Brueghel who at that time was still
under the guardianship of Rubens. Through his marriage, Teniers gained
access to the most important artistic circles in Antwerp, and Rubens and
his wife Helena Fourment became godparents to his children. In 1651,
Teniers went to Brussels to serve as court painter to the Spanish governor
Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria. There he oversaw the duke’s art
collection and publishedthe first illustrated gallery catalogue, the Theatrum
Pictorium.
Teniers_s graphite drawings, though seemingly jotted down with a loose
hand, capture impressions based on precise observation. They were
crucial for his paintings, which were executed using carefully planned
compositional designs as well as individual figure studies. His oeuvre is
directly related to the work of Adriaen Brouwer and Jan Brueghel.
Unvarnished Truths: Sebastian Vrancx and Adriaen Brouwer
Sebastian Vrancx was also a pupil of Adam van Noort. A friend and
collaborator of Brueghel, Vrancx painted conversation pieces, landscapes,
and battle scenes and is considered the founder of Flemish military
painting. His drawings depict soldiers, combat, and brutal attacks on
villages or travelers. Amid the horrors of the Eighty Years’ War, such
themes were especially in demand. Both Vrancx and Adriaen Brouwer
were members of the rhetoricians’ guild “De Violieren,” an influential
society of artists and poets that shaped cultural life through theater
performances and poetry competitions.
Little is known of the short life of Adriaen Brouwer, one of the most
important genre painters. A native of Oudenaarde, he settled in Antwerp
in 1631 where he lived with Paulus Pontius, an engraver fromRubens’s
workshop. Brouwer was a virtuoso at capturing affects and feelings and
expressed them masterfully through gesture and facial expression. His
incisive sketches and paintings, reflective of human interaction, were
admired by his contem-poraries: Rubens alone owned seventeen of his
paintings.
In the Shadow of Peter Paul Rubens: Pupils, Assistants and
Followers
This portion of the exhibition introduces several lesser-known artists of the
Flemish Baroque. They learned their craft from Rubens, served as
assistants in his workshop, or created engravings based on his
compositions.
Abraham van Diepenbeeck was trained as a glass painter. Considered
Rubens’s most faithful follower, he emulated the master’s style in his
paintings. In the1620s, he designed book illustrations for the
Plantinpublishing house together with Rubens and, at the latter’s behest,
copied Italian paintings during a visit to France.
Along with Quellinus and Jordaens, Cornelis Schut assisted with the
decorations for the entranceof the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand into
Antwerp in 1635, a commission the city had awarded to Rubens.He also
made engravings after Rubens and after his own designs.
Erasmus Quellinus the Younger studied philosophybefore devoting
himself to painting. The erudite artist drew modelli for tapestry series and
for woodcuts after paintings by Rubens, but also cooperated with Anthony
van Dyck, Frans Snyders, and Peeter Boel. After Ruben's death, his
widow commissioned Quellinus with the completion of unfinished
paintings.
Radical Experiments: Anthony van Dyck
Anthony van Dyck was an exceptional draftsman. Already at the age of
sixteen, he established himselfas an independent artist in Antwerp
following an apprenticeship with Hendrik van Balen. In 1616, he entered
Rubens's workshop as an assistant, where he participated in major
commissions and produced preliminary drawings for engravings after
paintings by the master. In 1620, van Dyck traveled to London and then to Rome, Venice, Sicily, and Genoa.He stayed there until 1627, acquiring an
excellentreputation as a portraitist. After a sojourn in Antwerp from 1627
to 1632, he went to London to serve as court painter to King Charles I of
England, where he became the most sought-after portrait painter of the
English aristocracy.
Van Dyck meticulously prepared his paintings, especially the early ones.
His numerous designs and individual studies, which he repeatedly varied,
show his love of experimentation in drawing. Many of his compositional
studies in pen seem raw and vigorous, focusing on the essentials while at
the same time evoking the highest degree of emotion.
Luxury and Transience: Still Life Drawing
Since very few Baroque still life drawings exist, only a small group of
works illustrate this important genre here. Frans Snyders specialized in
animal painting. He collaborated with Rubens, Jordaens, Quellinus, and
Boeckhorst to create images of sumptuously laden market stands, hunting
scenes, and artfully arranged still lifes with fruit, game,or poultry.
The still life shown here is derived from one of his brightly colored
renderings of a pantry, a motif the artist first developed during the
peaceful, optimistic period of the Twelve Years' Truce (1609–21). For
seventeenth-century viewers, such an arrangement conveyed not only
prosperity and the pleasures. of country life, but also the transience of all
earthly existence.
Peeter Boel studied with Jan Fyt, a pupil of Snyders.He collaborated with
Jordaens as well as with Rubens_s pupil Quellinus, who contributed
figures to paintings while Boel added the animals and still lifes. He was
one of the first artists to draw living animals outdoors in nature and in
natural poses.
Expansive Views: Late Landscape Drawings
The drawings in the final portion of the exhibition are related to the works
of Tobias Verhaecht, Jan Brueghel the Elder, and David Teniers the
Younger. They tell of the rise of landscape as an independent pictorial
genre rather than a mere background for religious or mythological scenes.
In the late sixteenth century, the fantastical “world landscapes” of artists
such as Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Joachim Patinir – panoramic views
shown from an aerial perspective – yielded to more realistic landscapes
inspired by the local environment.
Jan Brueghel made a decisive contribution to the representation of spatial
depth and the evocation of atmosphere, while David Vinckboons, who left
Antwerp as a religious refugee, created close-up views of forest
landscapes. Lucas van Uden, who stands in the tradition of Brueghel,
worked with Rubens and Teniers. Examples of his light-flooded,
atmospheric watercolors in subtle gradations of color, intended for middle class buyers on the open market, are exhibited here. Alongside Antwerp,
Brussels also developed into a center of landscape painting in the 1640s
with artists like Lodewijk de Vadder and Jacques d’Arthois.
Jacob Jordaens, Christus und die reuigen Sünder, um 1630, schwarze Kreide, Pinsel in Braun und Deckfarben, 308 × 368 mm Kupferstichkabinett – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Inv.-Nr. KdZ 5737 Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz
Peter Paul Rubens, Sitzende junge Frau mit erhobenem Arm, 1631/32 (Figurenstudie für den Liebesgarten), schwarze Kreide, Rötel, mit weißer Kreide gehöht, 423 × 500 mm Kupferstichkabinett – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Inv.-Nr. KdZ 4003 Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz
Anton van Dyck, Die Verlobung der heiligen Katharina, 1618–20, Feder und Pinsel in Braun, braun laviert, 186 × 264 mm Kupferstichkabinett – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Inv.-Nr. KdZ 1338 Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Volker-H. Schneider
Jan Brueghel d. Ä., Flussufer mit Booten am Ausgang eines Kanals, um 1603, Gouache, 194 × 246 mm Kupferstichkabinett – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Inv.-Nr. KdZ 746 Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz
David Teniers d. J., Figurenstudien: Tanzende, Bogenschützen, um 1640, Grafit, 279 × 172 mm Kupferstichkabinett – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Inv.-Nr. KdZ 12024 Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz
Theodor Rombouts, Zwei sitzende Soldaten, 1627/28 Rötel, 170 × 210 mm Kupferstichkabinett – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Inv.-Nr. KdZ 13677 Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz
Peter Paul Rubens, Bathseba erhält das Schreiben Davids, 1612–1614, Feder in Braun, Pinsel in Grau, 192 × 269 mm Kupferstichkabinett – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Inv.-Nr. KdZ 5397 Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Jörg P. Anders
Jacob Jordaens, Mädchen mit Früchtekorb vor einer offenen Tür mit einem Liebespaar, um 1635, schwarze Kreide, Pinsel Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Jörg P. Anders
Anton van Dyck, Skizzenblatt nach Figuren des Peter Paul Rubens, 1616, Schwarze Kreide, Feder in Braun, 310 × 202 mm Kupferstichkabinett – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Inv.-Nr. KdZ 5686 Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Jörg P. Anders
David Teniers d. J., Blick auf Antwerpen, um 1640, Grafit, 167 × 265 mm Kupferstichkabinett – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Inv.-Nr. KdZ 6414 Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz
Adriaen Brouwer, Figurenstudien, Vorzeichnung in Grafit, Feder in Braun, 220 × 321 mm Kupferstichkabinett – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Inv.-Nr. KdZ 1374 Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz
Lucas van Uden, Waldweg mit Figuren, Grafit, Feder in Braun und Schwarz, Pinsel in Grau, aquarelliert, 213 × 340 mm Kupferstichkabinett – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Inv.-Nr. KdZ 14038 Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Jörg P. Anders
