Van Gogh and Peter Paul Rubens: Portraits and colour as form

Summary This article discusses Vincent van Gogh’s (1853–1890) short-lived but intensive interest in Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) during his stay in Antwerp (November 1885 to February 1886). In contrast to Van Gogh’s enduring fascination with masters of the Northern Netherlands, his appreciation for Baroque artists from the Southern Netherlands was short-lived and of a different nature. After years of relative seclusion in the Brabant village of Nuenen, Van Gogh sought to immerse himself in a vibrant artistic environment in Antwerp where he would focus mainly on portraiture and figure painting. The famous Flemish trio, Rubens, Van Dyck, and Jordaens, served as guidelines, with Rubens as the main object of study. Van Gogh focused not so much on Rubens’ monumental compositions, but on details in works kept in the local museum, particularly women’s heads, but also how Rubens painted flesh, where modelling with colour was central. He praised the master’s working method: “I like Rubens precisely because of his straightforward manner of painting, his working with the simplest means.” At the same time, he remained critical of his emotional depth. According to him, Rubens was not sufficiently dramatic in expressing human suffering, and his religious scenes were sometimes “superficial, hollow, bombastic, yes, altogether conventional.” Still, he recognized Rubens’ exceptional ability to evoke atmosphere through colour. For his own Antwerp portrait studies, in which Van Gogh experimented with lighter flesh tones and brighter accents, Rubens ultimately proved to be a practical guide. Unlike his earlier Brabant head studies, Van Gogh tried to achieve liveliness by expressively using colour contrasts, but also by speaking to his models while painting. However, his approach remained different from that of Rubens: he painted wet-on-wet and as much as possible in one session, while Rubens worked more slowly, in layers, while adding accents. Although his fascination with the Flemish master was short-lived, Rubens remained in the background as Van Gogh developed further as a colourist. While Rubens became a primary model (along with Paolo Veronese) for the French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), Van Gogh ultimately found an example in the latter, with whom he would continue to be infatuated.