London.- BP British Art Displays at the Tate Britain present “Rubens and Britain” on view from November 22nd through May 6th 2012. A draftsman of extraordinary imagination, energy and skill, Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) was the leading Flemish exponent of baroque painting and the most successful international artist of the seventeenth century, producing works for several of Europe’s crowned heads. A new display at Tate Britain explores this artist’s connections with Britain’s monarchy and court through a group of fourteen key works. It unites Tate’s recently acquired initial sketch for the Banqueting House ceiling at Whitehall c.1628-30 – Rubens’s most ambitious British commission – with significant loans such as the iconic self-portrait 1623-4 (The Royal Collection) which Rubens sent over for Charles I, portraits of English courtiers, as well as the dramatic image of England’s patron saint A Landscape with St George and the Dragon 1629-30 (Royal Collection).
Rubens and Britain briefly traces the origins and development of Rubens’s masterpiece in Britain, the ceiling at Whitehall, through analysis of the magnificent large-scale sketch in oil paint, which is the only surviving overall preparatory work, and supporting archive material. Rubens came to Britain as a diplomat in 1629 to pave the way for a peace treaty between England and Spain. King Charles I took this opportunity to conclude the commission (long under discussion) for the vast ceiling paintings at Whitehall in memory of his father James I, perhaps one of the most important artistic commissions of the period in Britain. Rubens’s confidence in the face of this epic task is revealed in a letter where he commented ‘Everyone according to his gifts; my talent is such that no undertaking, however vast in size or diversified in subject, has ever surpassed my courage’. The nine canvases were produced by Rubens and his assistants in Antwerp and eventually installed in the ceiling in 1637.
Rubens was the first to bring the Baroque style to Britain. A businessman, scholar and diplomat as well as an artist, Rubens was in touch with leading art collectors at the English court from at least 1621, including the Duke of Buckingham and Earl of Arundel. Demonstrating Rubens’s wider links with English society of the time, his portrait of the Earl of Arundel 1629 (National Portrait Gallery) will be shown alongside an arresting preparatory drawing 1629-30 (Ashmolean Museum) in which the precise delineation of the Earl’s facial features crackles with energy. A portrait of James I’s physician Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayerne 1629-30 (The British Museum) will also be included.
Additional highlights of the display offer insight into the role of the Banqueting House as a cutting-edge example of Palladian architecture in Britain, used as a showpiece for some of the most important court occasions. These include Inigo Jones’s original architectural drawing and designs for the Queen’s costume for one of the masques held there (Chatsworth Settlement). Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) became the leading baroque painter in northern Europe. After studying in Italy, he fused his original Flemish training with the influence of earlier Italian artists including Michelangelo, Raphael, Veronese and Titian. Based in Antwerp, Rubens only visited Britain once, but the impact of his work on British art was continued through the appointment of his ‘best pupil’ Anthony van Dyck as Charles I’s court painter in 1632. Van Dyck’s influence on portraiture in Britain lasted until the early 20th century.
Tate Britain is the national gallery of British art. Located in London, it is one of the family of four Tate galleries which display selections from the Tate Collection. The other three galleries are Tate Modern, also in London, Tate Liverpool, in the north-west, and Tate St Ives, in Cornwall, in the south-west. The entire Tate Collection is available online. Tate Britain is the world centre for the understanding and enjoyment of British art and works actively to promote interest in British art internationally. The displays at Tate Britain call on the greatest collection of British art in the world to present an unrivalled picture of the development of art in Britain from the time of the Tudor monarchs in the sixteenth century, to the present day. The Collection comprises the national collection of British art from the year 1500 to the present day, and international modern art. Some of the highlights of the Tate collection of British art include rich holdings of portraiture from the age of Queen Elizabeth I; of the work of William Hogarth, sometimes called the father of English painting; of the eighteenth-century portraitists Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds; of the animal painter George Stubbs; of the artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood who revolutionised British art in the nineteenth century; and in the twentieth century of the work of Stanley Spencer, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Francis Bacon and the Young British Artists (YBAs) of the 1990s. The very latest contemporary art is presented through the Art Now programme and the annual Turner Prize exhibition. Special attention is given to three outstanding British artists from the Romantic age. William Blake and John Constable have dedicated spaces within the gallery, while the unique J. M. W. Turner Collection of about 300 paintings and many thousands of watercolours is housed in the specially built Clore Gallery. Visit the museum’s website at … http://www.tate.org.uk/britain