Rubens and his pupil: the Flemish room at Dulwich

A workshop rather than a single name

From 1609, Rubens ran one of the busiest workshops in Europe in Antwerp: such an influx of commissions that he permanently employed assistants and specialists, each responsible for one part of a painting — drapery, landscape backgrounds, animals — under Rubens's own supervision, which varied a great deal depending on the commission and its price. Van Dyck, who came to work there very young, was therefore not a simple pupil sitting at an easel: he was a paid collaborator, whose hand can be found in certain canvases signed by Rubens, before he went on to develop an independent practice.

The six paintings by Rubens and three by Van Dyck brought together in this room make it possible to compare the two hands only a few years apart — a rare exercise, since most museums hold only one or two examples of each.

1. Rubens: Venus, Mars and Cupid, and Hagar in the Desert

Venus, Mars and Cupid, painted around 1635, in the middle of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), stages an allegory of the triumph of peace over war, of love over hate — a subject Rubens, also a diplomat in the service of the Spanish Habsburgs, treated more than once, at a time when he was himself negotiating, alongside his painting, attempts at peace between European powers.

Hagar in the Desert, painted around 1630-1632, dates from the year Rubens remarried, to Hélène Fourment, then sixteen years old — a second marriage art historians have often linked to the resurgence of biblical scenes centred on female figures in his output of this period. An infrared examination has revealed elements of the original composition now lost, notably an angel in the sky and the infant Ishmael lying on the ground — proof that Rubens reworked his composition as he went rather than following a fixed plan from the outset.

2. Van Dyck: Samson and Delilah, before the English court

Samson and Delilah, painted around 1618-1620, belongs to the very earliest part of Van Dyck's career, while he was working in Rubens's Antwerp workshop, twenty-two years his senior. The painting directly takes up the subject of a Rubens canvas on the same theme (c. 1609-1610) — so closely that it long circulated under the master's name rather than the pupil's. Van Dyck nonetheless distinguishes himself through personal choices: Rubens sets his scene at night, in a bedchamber, at the moment when Samson's hair is already being cut; Van Dyck chooses broad daylight, outdoors, and the very last instant before the fatal act — a way of telling the same story through its tension rather than its outcome.

It is this same Antwerp period, before Van Dyck left for Italy and then became, from 1632, the official portraitist to the court of Charles I of England, that this room shows — a handling still close to his master's, before the more composed elegance that would make his British reputation.

3. Two careers that carry Antwerp elsewhere

Sir Peter Lely, born in the Netherlands, settled in England in 1643 and came through the English Revolution unscathed: he painted both parliamentarians, including Oliver Cromwell, and royalist nobility. After the Restoration of 1660, Charles II named him "Principal Painter in Ordinary" in 1661, the same title and the same annual salary — £200 — that Van Dyck had received under the previous reign: the continuity between the two men is thus not only stylistic, it is also institutional.

David Teniers the Younger, an Antwerp painter of genre scenes — taverns, peasant festivities, guardroom interiors —, took on a rather different role from 1651: appointed curator of the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in Brussels, he painted several views of the prince's gallery to record it, before overseeing the engraving of the entire collection in the Theatrum Pictorium, published in Antwerp in 1659 — one of the very first illustrated art catalogues ever printed.

How much time

Allow about twenty minutes for this room, stopping to compare directly the two Samson and Delilah paintings — Van Dyck's here, Rubens's which can be sought out in reproduction to gauge the gap between them.

Rubens — Venus, Mars and Cupid, Hagar in the Desert — 8 minutes.
Van Dyck — Samson and Delilah — 6 minutes.
Lely and Teniers — 6 minutes.

Sources and verification

Facts checked against the Dulwich Picture Gallery website and cross-checked sources (Wikipedia FR/EN, Art UK) for dates, dimensions and attributions.

Displays and room openings can change. Check the Dulwich Picture Gallery website on the day of your visit before following a route.

Listen to the commentary in the gallery

This route gives you a thread to follow. In front of an artwork, CulturAll adds the audio commentary: photograph the work or its label, listen, then ask your questions.