Enfilade

Peter Paul Rubens, The Rainbow Landscape (detail), ca. 1636
(London: The Wallace Collection)

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The last three talks in the series address the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century reception of Rubens. From The Wallace Collection:

Rubens Talk Series
Online, The Wallace Collection, 9 June — 21 July 2021

To accompany The Wallace Collection’s new exhibition Rubens: Reuniting the Great Landscapes, this series of seven talks will explore different aspects of Rubens’s extraordinary life and achievements, the fascinating social, cultural and economic circumstances of his age, and his enduring artistic legacy.

Series talks will be presented through Zoom Webinar. Each talk duration is 1 hour, including time for Q&A with the speaker. Tickets can be purchased for individual talks or the entire series. Ticket holders will receive their Zoom link, Webinar ID, and Passcode 24 hours in advance of each talk. Series talks, excluding 21 July, will be recorded. Following each talk, ticket holders will be emailed a link to view the recording, which will be available for one week only.

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John Chu | ‘Equal to the Great Masters’: Landscapes by Gainsborough and Rubens
Wednesday, 7 July 2021, 19.00 BST

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) had a lifelong love of Netherlandish landscape art. As his career developed so too did the range and depth of his appreciation for the ‘Great Masters’ of the Low Countries—prominent in this pantheon was Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640). In this talk, John Chu will consider the transformative influence of Rubens’s landscapes on Gainsborough’s art, examining what he learned from his predecessor and why these paintings became such an important model. Looking more broadly, he will also explore the reputation of Rubens’s landscapes in 18th-century Britain and establish the social and artistic conditions that shaped, and made possible, Gainsborough’s fruitful encounter with the works of the Flemish master.

Dr John Chu is Senior Curator of Pictures and Sculpture at the National Trust. He has taught and published widely on 18th-century British and French painting and specialises in the art of Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds.

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Christoph Vogtherr | Flemish Painting in 18th-Century French Collections
Wednesday, 14 July 2021, 19.00 BST

Flemish painting rose to a prominent role in Parisian collections only in the late 17th century. Even Rubens started to be regarded as one of the major European painters considerably later than in territories of the German Empire or in Italy. This change in perception and taste went hand in hand with new modes of picture displays. In the first decades of the 18th century, the comparison of schools and painters became the guiding principle of art presentation. Flemish painting was introduced into Parisian collections in this context of emulation and competition between the schools. In the process, Flemish and French painting gained a prominence comparable to Italian art. In this talk, Christoph Vogtherr will trace the rise of Flemish and Dutch painting in Parisian collections, its important position in picture displays and art theory, as well as its role in the formation of French 18th-century painting.

Dr Christoph Martin Vogtherr is General Director of the Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg. His main research interests are the history of the Prussian Royal palaces, French 18th-century painting, and the history of art collecting in the 18th and 19th centuries. He was previously Director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle (2016–19), and before that, Curator of paintings and then Director of the Wallace Collection from 2011 to 2016. He has published widely on 18th-century French painting.

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Tim Barringer | British Painters and Rubens’s Poetic Pastorals
Wednesday, 21 July 2021, 19.00 BST

Tim Barringer will explore the character of Rubens’s landscapes, which blend the legacies of classical poetry with the rough and tumble of rural life in the 17th century. Erudite references mix with rustic pastimes. While Rubens’s grand historical and religious paintings, like his portraits, commanded admiration across Europe, British artists and collectors found a special affinity with his pastoral works. Painters such as Constable, Turner, and Bonington were indelibly affected by the experience of seeing Rubens’s paintings and drawings, allowing them to see the natural world anew.

Dr Tim Barringer is Paul Mellon Professor and Chair of the Department of the History of Art at Yale University. He contributed to Rubens and his Legacy, the RA’s exhibition catalogue, and has co-curated exhibitions including American Sublime: Opulence and Anxiety; Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde; Picturesque and Sublime: Thomas Cole’s Trans-Atlantic Inheritance; Unto This Last: Two Hundred Years of John Ruskin; and Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts & Crafts Movement.