Circle of Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)

Details
Circle of Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)

Christ in the House of Simon the Pharisee

86 1/8 x 115 7/8in. (219.8 x 294.5cm.)
Provenance
Anon. Sale ('A Capital and Well Chosen Collection consigned from Abroad'), Christie's, 15 April 1772, lot 84, as Jordans (sic; 'a most extraordinary piece of colouring, the heads finely characterised and bears authentic marks of the pencil of Rubens'); purchased for 52gns. by Viscount Mountstuart, later 4th Earl and 1st Marquess of Bute (1744-1814), probably on behalf of his father, John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute (1713-1792) as the frame corresponds with others supplied for Luton Park c.1772/4 (see lot 343); first recorded at Luton Park in a catalogue prepared in, or shortly after, 1797 (in the Saloon, as Rubens and Jordaens - 'fine composition') and subsequently in inventories of 1799 (p. 44), January 1800 (no. 54) and 1822 (no. 74, in the Saloon), and by descent.
Literature
J.P. Richter, Catalogue of the Collection of Paintings lent for exhibition by the Marquis of Bute, K.T., London, 1883, no. 221, as Rubens
F. Russell, John, Third Earl of Bute: Patron and Collector, [forthcoming], Chapter XII
Exhibited
London, Bethnal Green Branch Museum, The Bute Collection, 1883, no. 221, as Rubens

Lot Essay

The present picture is based on the slightly smaller painting executed c.1618 by Rubens with the assistance of Van Dyck, once in the collection of Sir Robert Walpole at Houghton and now in the Hermitage (M. Varshavskaya, Rubens' Paintings in the Hermitage Museum, Leningrad, 1975, pp. 122-7, no. 18, illustrated, and colour pls. 16-18; M. Jaffé, Rubens. Catalogo completo, Milan, 1989, pp. 243-4, no. 508, illustrated). Van Dyck's contribution to that picture consisted of at least the heads of two of the apostles seated on Christ's right, which follow oil studies by Van Dyck himself (E. Larsen, The Paintings of Anthony van Dyck, Freren, 1988, nos. 100 and 136, I, pp. 187 and 405, figs. 119 and 450) rather than Rubens' oil sketch in the Akademie, Vienna (J.S. Held, The Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens, Princeton, 1980, I, pp. 464-5, no. 337; II, pl. 329); a third head relates to an oil sketch also given to Van Dyck by Jaffé and Larsen (op. cit., no. 137, I, p. 188, fig. 121) but tentatively accepted by Held as the work of Rubens.

The present picture is a very free copy of the Hermitage canvas, showing Simon the Pharisee wearing a patterned rather than a plain cloak and a basket rather than a bowl of fruit on the table, and with numerous variations in the poses of the figures. The most notable changes made by the painter of the present picture are the heads, most of which are completely different from those in both the Hermitage canvas and the Vienna sketch

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