Drawings from Bruegel to Rubens in Flemish Collections

The opportunity to admire such a fine collection of Flemish drawings is so rare that we can only regret having missed the opening in autumn 2023 of this exciting Antwerp exhibition, which has just closed its doors before being given a new lease of life thanks to a fruitful partnership with Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum. In 2021, the Getty Paper Project decided to support the organisation of the exhibition and the publication of its remarkable catalogue, in which eighty richly illustrated notes accompany the three essays by Sarah Van Ooteghem, Virginie D’haene and An Van Camp, which clarify the thematic focus of the exhibition, with the function of drawing as a common thread.

1. Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)
Hercules and the Lion of Nemea, circa 1639
Black chalk and red chalk - 36.3 x 49.8 cm
Antwerp, Museum Plantin-Moretus
Photo: Museum Plantin-Moretus

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2. Rubens’ drawing compared with the terracotta kept at the Rubenshuis and reattributed to Artus Quellinus in the current exhibition.
Photo: Alexandre Lafore

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At first glance, this subtle approach may seem esoteric, especially as the terminology used is often mastered only by specialists who are quick to distinguish between studies, sketches and cartoons. But the strength of this approach was that, in the Antwerp phase where we saw it, it encouraged as often as possible relevant comparisons with engravings, sculptures and printed works, in perfect keeping with the spirit of the place, since this atypical museum remains above all a house dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge and images. It’s not without emotion that we wander through these spaces, which don’t seem to have changed since the 16th or 17th-century, furnished with printing presses and library shelving. The exhibition slipped discreetly into these historic rooms and welcomed objects from other Flemish institutions such as the Rubenshuis, currently closed for renovation work, which facilitated the loan of a very fine terracotta definitively returned to Artus Quellinus I and paired with an equally superb drawing by Rubens (ill. 1 and 2) which will travel alone to Oxford. Of course, the master took the lion’s share of the exhibition space, escorted by Antoon Van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens, who form a sort of Saint Trinity from Antwerp, but the exhibition organisers took great care to leave plenty of room for other lesser-known artists, as well as previously unpublished sheets and recent acquisitions.

3. Pieter Brueghel I (1526/30-1569)
Landscape with a Herd and a Village, c. 1554
Pen and brown ink, brown wash - 19.7 x 25.8 cm
Antwerp, The Phoebus Foundation
Photo: Christie’s

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Magnanimous, the Flemish teams agreed to lend a spectacular landscape (ill. 3) by Pieter Brueghel I to Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum after having unveiled it in Antwerp. The landscape had a British provenance but was repatriated…