Peter Paul Rubens
, Flemish, 1577-1640
Title
Head of a Bearded ManDate1622-1624
MediumOil on oak panel
Dimensions
50.8 × 41.3 × 2 cm
Credit LineHeritage Gift, Denis & Catherine O'Brien, 2016
Object numberNGI.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); by descent to Sir Alfred Beit, 2nd Bt. (1903-1994), Russborough, Co. Wicklow, Ireland; Heritage Gift, Denis & Catherine O'Brien, 2016Exhibition HistoryFlemish Art 1300-1700, Royal Academy, London, 1953-54, no.185Oil Sketches and Smaller Pictures by Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Agnew's, London, 20 February - 11 March 1961, no.16
P.P. Rubens Paintings, Oil Sketches, Drawings, 29 June - 30 September 1977, no. 61
New Perspectives. Acquisitions 2011 - 2020, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 11 May - 2 August 2021
Turning Heads - Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, KSMKA - Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, Antwerp, 20 October 2023 - 21 January 2024
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.