full of Art. Rubens as Art Collector. Rubens was also a passionate book-lover, and his library was one of the largest in Antwerp. A selection of books from this library is on display at the Plantin-Moretus Museum, once home to the printing house of Christopher Plantin, his son-in-law Jan Moretus and grandson Balthazar Moretus, who was a friend of Rubens. Later in the year, an exhibition at the same museum will be devoted to Rubens and Book Illustrations (12 June to 12 September 2004). During the same period, other exhibitions will focus on Rubens in Black and White. Reproduction Graphics 1650-1680 (Rockox House) and Copyright Rubens. Rubens and Graphic art at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts; the latter will be travelling to Quebec in October 2004.
Brussels' Royal Museum of Fine Arts is making an important contribution to the Lille exhibition by loaning works by Rubens, although in exchange it is getting a number of paintings from the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille. Together with works from other museums and its own considerable collection, these form the exhibition From Delacroix to Courbet. Rubens under Discussion (from 6 March to 13 June 2004), which examines Rubens' influence on the modernisation of painting at the turn of the nineteenth century.
The exhibition The Invention of Landscape. Flemish Landscape Painting from Patinir to Rubens (8 May to 1 August 2004 at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts) will certainly be one of the highlights of the Rubens Year. This exhibition has already been on show at the Villa Hügel in Essen in 2003, where it was visited by 140,000 people, and at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (until 12 April 2004). It shows how in Antwerp, in the course of the sixteenth century, the foundation was laid for the renewal in landscape painting which culminates in Rubens' baroque landscapes. At the end of the eighteenth century, landscapes by Rubens became real collector's items in England. Thomas Gainsborough, for one, was an admirer, and John Constable proclaimed in 1833: ‘In no other branch of art is Rubens greater than in landscape.’
For the ordinary mortal this array of exhibitions is amply sufficient. Afterwards, he can quietly retire and enjoy the various catalogues. And if you have missed the exhibitions in Lille or Antwerp you can always go to New York (and then to Vienna) for the most comprehensive overview of Rubens' drawings. At this exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum of Art you can, for example, discover the beautiful sheets showing Hélène Fourment and Rubens' children (1 November 2004 to 9 January 2005). Or visit the Bruce Museum of Arts and Sciences (Greenwich, NY, 17 September 2004 to 2 January 2005) (and then the Berkeley Art Museum and the Cincinnati Art Museum) for an overview of sketches for oil-paintings.
This outline is still incomplete. In short: anyone who fails to visit a Rubens exhibition in 2004 is either living on another planet or is a real Rubens-hater; and for the latter it's going to be a very trying year.
Dirk van Assche
Translated by John Irons
www.rubens2004.be
www.lille2004.fr
www.exporubens.com