Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish, 1577-1640
Title: Head of a Bearded Man
Date: 1622-1624
Medium: Oil on oak panel
Dimensions:
50.8 x 41.3 cm
Credit Line: Heritage Gift, Denis & Catherine O'Brien, 2016
Object Number: NGI.2016.21
ProvenanceCount Serguiew, Belgrade and Moscow. Dr. A.C. von Frey, Paris; with Agnew’s, London, from whom acquired in July 1930 by Sir Otto Beit, 1st Bt. (1865-1930), and by descent to Sir Alfred Lane Beit, 2nd Bt. (1903-1994), Russborough, Co. Wicklow, Ireland.
Exhibition HistoryFlemish Art 1300-1700, Royal Academy, London, 1953-54, no.185
Oil Sketches and Smaller Pictures by Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Agnew's, London, 20 February - 11 March 1961, no.16
P.P. Rubens Paintings, Oilsketches, Drawings, 29 June - 30 September 1977, no. 61
Oil Sketches and Smaller Pictures by Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Agnew's, London, 20 February - 11 March 1961, no.16
P.P. Rubens Paintings, Oilsketches, Drawings, 29 June - 30 September 1977, no. 61
Label TextActive as a painter, draughtsman and diplomat, Rubens was the most versatile and influential Baroque artist of seventeenth-century Flanders. He blended influences of the Italian High Renaissance with northern realism. Previously owned by Sir Alfred and Lady Beit, Head of a Bearded Man is a stunning display of the artist’s fluid, yet decisive brushwork capturing a live model. The painting probably belongs to a group of about twenty-five extant studies of heads which were kept in Rubens’s studio and which assistants could replicate in biblical and mythological paintings at a later date.