Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum Presents Rubens Seminar Turned Exhibition

Rarely Viewed Neptune Calming the Tempest Stirs Up Questions of Art and History

Peter Paul Rubens, Neptune Calming the Tempest, 1635. Oil on wood panel, 48.9 cm. x 64.14 cm., Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University

Cambridge, MA (December 14, 2001)—Calming the Tempest With Peter Paul Rubens examines that artist’s famous oil sketch Neptune Calming the Tempest in two alternative contexts—historical and visually associative—that bring out its resonance and complexity. On view at the Fogg Art Museum from December 22, 2001 through March 17, 2002, the exhibition is drawn principally from the Harvard University Art Museums’ collection, with 35 objects ranging chronologically from ancient Greek coins to a contemporary conceptual work by the late Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers.

Rubens’s oil sketch is one of the most significant 17th century paintings in the Fogg collection. It has long been celebrated as both a stirring image of Neptune calming storm-tossed seas and a preparatory sketch for a giant temporary festival structure built to celebrate the processional entry of the new governor of the Spanish Netherlands into Antwerp in 1635. Acting on the premise that history is as much a matter of the present as of the past, curator Ivan Gaskell presents the painting in two contexts. One concerns what a historically uninformed viewer might see in this puzzling and dramatic nautical scene today by using visual comparisons. The other offers material that illuminates the cultural tradition and social circumstances within which Rubens was working to produce this painting in Antwerp in the 1630s. Gaskell, who is Margaret S. Winthrop Curator of Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts, developed the idea for the exhibition in a graduate seminar he taught, called "Confronting Rubens."

"This is the very core of our mission as an innovative teaching and research museum, and we are delighted to bring this historical examination of Rubens out of the seminar room to the interested public," said James Cuno, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard University Art Museums.

Among the highlights in Calming the Tempest are four other Rubens paintings, including Leda and the Swan, c. 1598. Works that add to the conversation are Edgar Degas’s Study for "Young Spartans Exercising" (c. 1860–61), and Hiroshi Sugimoto’s North Pacific Ocean, Stinson Beach (1994). Inclusion of Broodthaers’s A Voyage on the North Sea (1974)—in its book version—provides a link with associate curator of contemporary art Linda Norden’s simultaneous exhibition, Extreme Connoisseurship, which includes the slide sequence version of the same work.

"Rubens’s oil sketch is a stirring image—a vigorous white-bearded man riding a seashell drawn by seahorses over the waves, accompanied by naked swimming babes," said Gaskell. "Even the inexperienced eye can become locked in this dramatic composition—relying on powers of observation and association to appreciate this object of great complexity."

Rubens
Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) was born in Seigen, German, and found sanctuary in his family’s native Antwerp in 1587. He trained with painters there and became a member of the Guild of St. Luke (1589). A journey in 1600 to Italy, where he studied sculpture and Renaissance paintings, gave him skills and techniques that can be seen throughout his career.

Rubens returned to Antwerp in 1608. His prestige in Europe grew with his appointment by the governors of the southern Netherlands—the Austrian archduke Albert and his wife Isabella, the Spanish infanta—as court painter. Over the next decade, Rubens secured his reputation throughout Europe, building a large house and studio to accommodate commissions as well as many studio assistants and students, such as Anthony van Dyck.

About the Harvard University Art Museums
The Harvard University Art Museums are among the world’s leading arts institutions, with the Arthur M. Sackler, Busch-Reisinger, and Fogg art museums, the Straus Center for Conservation, and the U.S. headquarters for the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, an excavation project in western Turkey.

The Harvard University Art Museums are distinguished by the range and depth of their collections, their groundbreaking exhibitions, and the original research of their staff. As an integral part of the Harvard community, the three Art Museums serve as a resource for all students, adding a special dimension to their areas of study. The public is welcome to experience the collections and exhibitions as well as to enjoy lectures, symposia, and other programs.

For more than a century, the Harvard University Art Museums have been the nation’s premier training ground for museum professionals and scholars and are renowned for their role in the development of the discipline of art history in this country.

Location and Hours
The Fogg Art Museum and the Busch-Reisinger Museum are located at 32 Quincy St., Cambridge. The Arthur M. Sackler Museum is next door at 485 Broadway. All are a short walk from the Harvard Square MBTA station.

Hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., and the Museums are closed on national holidays. Admission is $5; $4 for seniors; $3 for students; and free for those under 18 years of age. The Museums are free to everyone all day on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, 10 a.m. until noon. The Harvard University Art Museums receive support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.