About this artwork
Rubens painted this landscape in the mid-1630s, at his country house outside Antwerp. He was in his late fifties, semi-retired from his diplomatic career, and he was producing the landscapes that are among the most personal of his works. He painted them for himself, not for commission, and they show a side of Rubens that the altarpieces and mythological canvases do not.
A rainbow arches across the sky above a pastoral scene. In the foreground, a farmer drives a cart loaded with hay, pulled by two oxen. A woman walks beside the cart, carrying a bundle. To the right, a group of cows stands in a field, their bodies warm against the green landscape. Behind them, a river winds through a valley, and a village with a church spire is visible in the distance. The sky is full of clouds, dark at the edges, with the rainbow cutting through them in a band of pink, yellow, and blue.
Rubens bought the country house called Het Steen in 1635, and he spent the last five years of his life there, painting the surrounding landscape. His late landscapes are different from his earlier work: they are quieter, more observational, less dramatic. He was looking at the land around his own house, and he painted it with the attention of a man who had decided to stay in one place.
Rubens was born in Siegen in 1577 and trained in Antwerp. He spent eight years in Italy, copying the Old Masters and absorbing the Venetian use of color. He returned to Antwerp in 1608 and built the largest painting workshop in northern Europe, producing altarpieces, mythological scenes, and portraits for collectors across Europe. He was also a diplomat, knighted by both the English and Spanish kings. The late landscapes were a private pleasure, painted in the intervals between diplomatic missions and workshop commissions.
Oil on panel, 86 by 130 centimeters, roughly 34 by 51 inches. Rubens painted on a smooth wood panel, building the landscape in thin layers of warm color. The sky is the most expressive part of the painting, with the clouds rendered in broad strokes of grey, white, and blue, and the rainbow in a thin band of translucent color. The cows in the foreground are painted with the same care that Rubens gave to the figures in his mythological canvases, their bodies solid and warm against the green field.
The horizontal format and warm palette make this print work well in a living room or dining room with traditional furniture. The pastoral subject suits a country interior or a room with warm-toned walls. A gold frame is traditional for Rubens. The 18x24 size gives the landscape and the rainbow enough room to read.
The painting is in the Wallace Collection in London.
This is a public domain artwork. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 18x24 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.
