Rubens's landscapes

Christopher Brown takes a fresh look at the development of Rubens's landscape paintings, re-examining their chronology and their construction, and reconsidering the works in the context of Ruben's life and artistic concerns. He begins his survey by placing the landscapes in the tradition of Flemish landscape painting, in particular showing their relationship to the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (whose Flight into Egypt was owned by Rubens).

He looks at Rubens's early landscapes, completed in the years following his return from Italy in 1608, immediately raising one of the principal themes of the book: how these paintings were made. A chapter is devoted to Landscape with Het Steen, in which he describes Rubens's life as a country gentleman - his purchase of the estate of Het Steen and the time he spent there in the 1630s with his second wife and young family - and discusses the composition of Landscape with Het Steen and its pendant the Landscape with a Rainbow (now in the Wallace Collection, London).

He also considers Rubens's pastoral landscapes of the 1630s, showing how their mood was influenced by classical literature.

Rubens's working methods - his drawing from nature, his adaptation of landscape motifs in the studio, his use of oil sketches - are compared with contemporary landscape practice, and in a chapter on the making of the landscapes Dr. Brown describes the construction, preparation and the ground of the panels Rubens used for his landscape paintings, and the panelmakers who made them.

Finally, he considers the last years at Het Steen and the ways in which Rubens's essentially private landscape paintings were made known during his lifetime and later, for example through engravings, and looks at the influence of these works on British painters, particularly Gainsborough and Constable.