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Portrait of Rubens' Wife by Unidentified / American Art
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Portrait of Rubens' Wife

17th century Unidentified Copy after Peter Paul Rubens Born: Siegen, Westphalia, Germany 1577 Died: Antwerp, Belgium 1640 oil on canvas 27 1/8 x 21 1/4 in. (69.0 x 54.0 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum Bequest of Mabel Johnson Langhorne 1956.11.28 Smithsonian American Art Museum
3rd Floor, Luce Foundation Center



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Portrait of Rubens' Wife



The subject of this portrait, Helena Fourment, was the second wife of the great Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). They married in 1630, when he was fifty-three and she was sixteen. During his lifetime, Rubens’s works were much admired and copied by other artists, as in this portrait done by an unidentified artist. Paintings by Rubens, and copies of them, were also popular among nineteenth-century American collectors. Harper’s Weekly and other magazines fed public interest in Rubens, printing stories about his family and his beautiful wife Helena. In 1877, Harper’s described her as a “proud, stately lady in rich costume, her countenance expressive of languid complacency,” attributes nicely captured in this seventeenth-century portrait.

For more information about this work visit the Luce Foundation Center.


Keywords

Portrait female - Rubens, Wife Of

painting

paint - oil

fabric - canvas

About Unidentified

About Copy after Peter Paul Rubens

Born: Siegen, Westphalia, Germany 1577 Died: Antwerp, Belgium 1640

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