Young Man Descending Stairs
by Peter Paul Rubens, ca. 1631-1632, black and red chalk heightened with white on light brown paper, 221/4 x 1515/16. Collection Amsterdam Historical Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Rubenstein notes that the courtier pictured here exhibits the same hustle attributed to Rubens. "Look at himóhe's rushing out of the picture!" he says. "What a busy man."
The stereotype has artists living a poor, Bohemian lifestyle, but Peter Paul Rubens (1577~1640) is evidence that some artists achieve immense success. By most accounts, Rubens was a well-respected, rich, happy artist who also collected antiques, raised a big family, and secured a peace treaty or two while serving as a high-level diplomat. He was a busy man of action, and paper was never doodled upon frivolouslyónearly all of his drawings were preliminary studies for grander commissions. One marvels even more at the confident, beautiful lines of his drawings in light of the knowledge that he most assuredly would consider them working documents, unsuitable for exhibition. What makes him special is "his mastery of the chalk technique," according to Eitel-Porter. "He needed just a few strokes to evoke not only the figure's pose but also its emotional state."Indeed, the Belgian court painter demonstrated incredible facility in his drawings, with a hint of bombast. His hand is sure. "Rubens used naturally robust, confident marks, and flowing gestures," says Rubenstein, who in particular admires the artist's drawings made with three colors of chalk. "Red chalk is beautiful, but it has a limitation on its rangeóyou often want to use black chalk and white chalk to increase it further on each end of the value range," Rubenstein explains. "It's like the difference between a chord and one noteóextending the reach of red chalk."
Resources
Peter Paul Rubens: The Drawings, by Anne-Marie S. Logan (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York)
Peter Paul Rubens: A Touch of Brilliance, by Mikhail Piotrovsky, (Prestei Publishing, Munich, Germany)
Young Woman Looking Down (Study for the Head of St. Apollonia)
by Peter Paul Rubens, 1628, black and red chalk heightened with white, retouched with pen and brown ink, 16 x 11. Collection Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.
The red chalk evokes the warmth of the flesh in the subject's face, while the black chalk serves as accents and to depict the hair. "It's harder than you think to marry those two tones," comments Rubenstein. "Compare this to Leonardo's woman: his is an angel; Rubens' is a real woman. You can touch her." The artist turned the piece of chalk or sharpened it to get a sharp line, varying the width of the strokes and allowing precise highlights.
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