Summer of Reunions - Rubens' Landscapes
Few artistic reunions carry the emotional and historical weight of Rubens Reunited at The Wallace Collection. For the first time in over two hundred years, Peter Paul Rubens’ two companion landscape masterpieces—A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning (belonging to the National Gallery) and The Rainbow Landscape (the jewel of the Wallace Collection)—hang side-by-side in the same room, as Rubens originally intended.
Painted in the late 1630s for the artist’s own enjoyment at his country estate, the Manor of Het Steen in Brabant, these two monumental panels represent the pinnacle of seventeenth-century European landscape painting. Free from the demands of royal patrons or religious commissions, Rubens painted these works purely out of personal passion, capturing the radiant, fertile countryside of Flanders with uninhibited grandeur.
“To stand between these two canvases is to experience Rubens at his most intimate and expansive: a master celebrating the rhythm of earth, light, and rural labor.”
Het Steen opens up on a crisp autumn dawn, with hunters stalking game, farm wagons trundling across wooden bridges, and golden sunlight breaking through morning mist. Opposite it, The Rainbow Landscape offers a warmer, afternoon light bathed in rain-softened atmosphere, crowned by a glowing arc across a sweeping horizon.
The Wallace Collection’s precise lighting and focused gallery setup allow viewers to examine Rubens’ energetic brushwork up close—where thick impasto depicts glistening foliage and fluid glazes convey distant hills. This landmark display is not merely a triumph of conservation and loan diplomacy, but an unforgettable encounter with one of art history’s greatest masters at peace with nature.
Originally published in Felix.