Portrait of Helena Fourment (1614-1673), the Artist’s Second Wife

…; purchased by Antoine-Jean-Baptiste Dutartre (1714-1804), Paris (‘Le troisième [painting by Rubens] représente une des femmes de Rubens, peinte par lui’), between 1770-80¹¹B.B. Fredericksen and B. Peronnet (eds.), Repertoire des tableaux vendus en France au XIXe siècle, I (1801-10), pt. 1 (A-N), pt. 2 (O-Z et Anonymes), Los Angeles 1998-, pt. 1, p. 25, under no. 72. or by 1787;²²L.-V. Thiéry, Guide des amateurs et des étrangers voyageurs à Paris, 2 vols., Paris 1787, I, pp. 584-85. his sale, Paris (A. Paillet), 19 March 1804, no. 18 (‘Rubens. Le Portrait d’une des plus belles Femmes de ce grand Coloriste, représentée de face à mi-corps, dans le plus riche Costume de Cour. Elle est coiffée d’une large chevelure simplement ornée d’une branche d’oranger qui laisse voir encore un petit ornement de pierreries. A ses oreilles sont des Pendeloques de perles, et son cou est paré d’un Collier dont l’orient produit la plus grande illusion, en se détachant avec art sur la plus brillante carnation. […] (Supp: sur bois Dim. haut de 27, large de 20 [approx. 73 x 54 cm])’), frs. 8,600, to the dealer Maurice for Lucien Bonaparte (1775-1840);³³B.B. Fredericksen and B. Peronnet (eds.), Repertoire des tableaux vendus en France au XIXe siècle, I (1801-10), pt. 1 (A-N), pt. 2 (O-Z et Anonymes), Los Angeles 1998-, pt. 1, pp. 25-26, under no. 72, and pt. 2, pp. 947-48 under 1804/03/19/0018. transferred from Paris, following the exile of Lucien Bonaparte, to Rome, Palazzo Lancellotti, Primo Salone, no. 2 (‘Ritratto di Donna del Rubens’), in 1804;⁴⁴List of 13 June 1804 by Domenico Conti Bazzani in M. Natoli (ed.), Luciano Bonaparte: Le sue collezione d’arte, le sue residenze a Roma, nel Lazio, in Italia (1804-1840), Rome 1995, app. 1, p. 40. transferred to Palazzo Nuñez, Room 7, no. 72, 1806-10, 1811-22;⁵⁵G.A. Guattani, Galleria del Senatore Luciano Bonaparte, 2 vols., Rome 1808, II, p. 3. transferred via Bologna to Paris, 1826;⁶⁶Application of 17 October 1823 to export ‘Rubens: Ritratto della sua moglie’ to Bologna, see M. Natoli (ed.), Luciano Bonaparte: Le sue collezione d’arte, le sue residenze a Roma, nel Lazio, in Italia (1804-1840), Rome 1995, app. 4, p. 45. License granted to export (from the Papal States) ‘Il Ritratto della moglie di Rubens’, for the purpose of sale, 12 January 1826, see Natoli 1995, app. 5, pp. 46-47. from Lucien Bonaparte, frs. 20,000 or £ 800, perhaps with SK-C-284, to the dealer Armand-Jacques Fossard, Paris, 1826;⁷⁷B.B. Fredericksen and B. Peronnet (eds.), Repertoire des tableaux vendus en France au XIXe siècle, I (1801-10), pt. 1 (A-N), pt. 2 (O-Z et Anonymes), Los Angeles 1998-, pt. 2, p. 1407. J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, 9 vols., London 1929-42, II, no. 800 and idem, IX, no. 269. from whom, frs. 1,300 or £ 520, to the dealer John Smith, London, July 1830;⁸⁸Smith, in a handwritten entry for no. 200, pp. 225-26 (his interleaved, working copy of his printed catalogue of 1830 is in the National Gallery library), stated: ‘The portrait of this handsome & favorite [sic] wife of Rubens occurs so frequently among that artist’s works (historical as well as portraiture) that there can be no question of the high opinion he entertained of her beauty […] The Picture […] is a glorious example of genius, influenced by the ardour of Love. A most seductive & fascinating expression animates the countenance, which is enhanced by the most dazzling fairness of complexion & the rosy blush of health. These are accomplished by a rich and juicy empasto [sic] of colour, wrought with inimitable care and attention to detail & set of [sic] to superlative advantage by the surrounding parts, which are rendered most skilfully, subordinate to that object & are painted with an assumed negligence for that purpose & dextrous freedom of hand.’ from whom, with SK-C-284, £ 800, to Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam, July 1833;⁹⁹Smith & Successors, Stock Book, 1822-1850, p. 35; Day Book, II, p. 396: ‘A magnificent Portrait of Helena Fourment by Rubens … from Colln of Lucien Bonaparte in a 7½ in. [19 cm] richly carved gilt frame-800’, Ledger, National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1829-1866, p. 46. Van der Hoop Lijst, p. 5, no. 66: ‘Portret van Helena Forman, tweede vrouw van P.P. Rubens, door hem geschilderd […] fl. 8600’. by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam with 223 other paintings, 1854;¹⁰¹⁰Van der Hoop Taxatie 1854, p. 3, no. 66: ‘P.P. Rubbens, portret van Helena Forment, fl. 6000’. on loan from the City of Amsterdam to the museum, since 30 June 1885¹¹¹¹Provenance also reconstructed in A. Pollmer-Schmidt, ‘Catalogus van de schilderijen in de verzameling van Adriaan van der Hoop’, in E. Bergvelt et al. (eds.), De Hollandse meesters van een Amsterdamse bankier. De verzameling van Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), exh. cat. Amsterdam (Amsterdams Historisch Museum/Rijksmuseum) 2004-05, pp. 135-195, esp. p. 171, no. 148.

ObjectNumber: SK-C-295

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)

Helena, the eleventh and youngest child of Daniel and Clara (née Stappaert) Fourment, was baptized on 1 April 1614 in the Sint Jacobskerk, Antwerp. Her father was a successful silk and tapestry dealer, and the family became related to Rubens when the sister of Isabella Brant (d. 1626), his first wife, married a Fourment son.¹²¹²C. Ruelens and M. Rooses (eds.), Correspondance de Rubens et documents epistolaires concernant sa vie et ses oeuvres, 6 vols., Antwerp 1887-1909, IV, p. 301. Rubens would have come into renewed contact with Daniel Fourment after his return to Antwerp from London in the spring of 1630 over the tapestry series of the Story of Achilles, the modelli for which by Rubens have been dated circa 1630, although the circumstances surrounding the series’ conception remains obscure.¹³¹³E. Haverkamp-Begemann, The Achilles Series, London 1975, pp. 17-19; and F. Lammertse and A. Vergara (eds.), Peter Paul Rubens: The Life of Achilles, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen)/Madrid (Museo Nacional del Prado) 2003-04, pp. 11-15. It should be borne in mind that Brosens has recently proposed a later dating of the series, see K. Brosens, ‘New Light on the Raes Workshop in Brussels and Rubens’s Achilles series’, in T.P. Campbell and A.H. Cleland (eds.), Tapestry in the Baroque: New Aspects of Production and Patronage, New York/New Haven (Conn.)/London 2011, pp. 20-33, esp. p. 28. The marriage with Helena took place on 6 December of that year in the Sint Jacobskerk, some eight months after his return following an absence (not counting the inside of a week) of about one and three-quarter years. In that time Helena would have matured into a young woman, whose beauty was to be celebrated.¹⁴¹⁴C. Ruelens and M. Rooses (eds.), Correspondance de Rubens et documents epistolaires concernant sa vie et ses oeuvres, 6 vols., Antwerp 1887-1909, V, p. 344, note 1; for the epithalamium by Gaspar Gevaerts, see Idem, V, pp. 344-47; for the Cardinal-Infante’s compliment of 27 February 1639, see Idem, VI, p. 228. In a famous letter to his friend, the well-known antiquarian Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637), of 18 December 1634 (misdated as 1635), Rubens reported that he had taken ‘…a young wife from an honest but bourgeois family … I chose one who would not blush to see me take my brushes in hand’.¹⁵¹⁵R.S. Magurn, The Letters of Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Cambridge 1955, p. 393 ; C. Ruelens and M. Rooses (eds.), Correspondance de Rubens et documents epistolaires concernant sa vie et ses oeuvres, 6 vols., Antwerp 1887-1909, VI, p. 82. The Italian original reads: ‘... una moglie giovine di parenti honesti pero cittadini … mi piacque una che non s’aroserebbe vendendomi pigliar gli penelli in mano …’. Helena bore Rubens five children; the last was born just over eight months after his death on 30 May 1640.¹⁶¹⁶F.J. van den Branden, Geschiedenis der Antwerpsche schilderschool, 3 vols., Antwerp 1883, II, p. 104, and note 2. As a result of her marriage, Helena became a rich, prominent and ennobled member of the Antwerp patriciate, and Rubens portrayed her as such in the full-length portrait in the Louvre, in which she steps out into the street to her waiting carriage.¹⁷¹⁷H. Vlieghe, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIX (2): Portraits of Identified Sitters Painted in Antwerp, London 1987, no. 100.

In 1644, when she was thirty years old, Helena married Jonkheer Jan Baptist van Brouchoven van Bergeyk, an ex-alderman of the city of Antwerp, who went on to have a distinguished diplomatic career in the service of the king of Spain. He was elevated to the barony of Bergeyck in 1665 and created a count in 1676, three years after the death of Helena, which took place in Brussels where the couple had lived latterly. She was buried in the Sint Jacobskerk, Antwerp, beside her first husband according to the instruction of her will of 1658. She had borne her second husband six children.¹⁸¹⁸F. Donnet, ‘Quelques lettres inédites concernant Hélène Fourment’, Annales de l’académie royale d’archéologie de Belgique 7 (1899/1900), pp. 557-66. Evidence from a letter of 9 November 1671 shows that she was, indeed, a person of influence.¹⁹¹⁹F. Donnet, ‘Quelques lettres inédites concernant Hélène Fourment’, Annales de l’académie royale d’archéologie de Belgique 7 (1899/1900), pp. 557-66. She had, of course, also twice been a fecund wife.

Although there is no portrait of Helena that can be said to be documented in the strictest sense, her likeness can be established by the physiognomy (admittedly generalized) of Venus in the Prado Judgement of Paris contemporaneously identified as having her features in a letter by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand²⁰²⁰Letter of the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand to his brother, C. Ruelens and M. Rooses (eds.), Correspondance de Rubens et documents epistolaires concernant sa vie et ses oeuvres, 6 vols., Antwerp 1887-1909, VI, p. 228; for the painting see M. Díaz Padrón, Museo del Prado: Catálogo de pinturas, I: Escuela flamenca siglo XVII, 2 vols., Madrid 1975, no. 1669, pp. 270-71. and Het Pelsken as named by Rubens (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) an intimate portrayal in which she covers herself only in a fur wrap and which remained in her possession.²¹²¹H. Vlieghe, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIX (2): Portraits of Identified Sitters Painted in Antwerp, London 1987, no. 96. Two portraits in the Munich Alte Pinakothek were among the 105 paintings acquired from Gisbert van Colen (or Ceulen, 1636-1703) in 1698 by Max-Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, as ‘2. Portraits van der Madame Rubens’.²²²²H. Glaser (ed.), Kürfurst Max Emanuel: Bayern und Europa um 1700, Munich 1976, pp. 222-23, 227-28. One of these two portraits was the prototype of the present picture, which was similarly identified when first referred to in print in 1787. Van Colen was married to a niece of Helena Fourment.²³²³H. Glaser (ed.), Kürfurst Max Emanuel: Bayern und Europa um 1700, Munich 1976, pp. 222-23; Renger in K. Renger with C. Denk, Flämische Malerei des Barock in der Alten Pinakothek, Munich/Cologne 2002, p. 14. And there can be no reason to doubt the traditional identification of these two portraits.

The museum picture (which is on a composite oak support of two pieces of timber originating from the west German/Netherlandish region and available for use from 1626) has been associated with that in Munich since 1842,²⁴²⁴J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, 9 vols., London 1929-42, IX, under no. 269. when it was believed to be preliminary to it, a theory last embraced by Norris, just over a hundred years later.²⁵²⁵C. Norris, Review of L. van Puyvelde, ‘La peinture flamande à Rome’, The Burlington Magazine 95 (1953), pp. 107-09, esp. p. 108. Vlieghe recorded Burchard’s opinion that the central portion – of the face with the chest and upper part of the garment – was autograph;²⁶²⁶H. Vlieghe, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIX (2): Portraits of Identified Sitters Painted in Antwerp, London 1987, under no. 96. his own view was in agreement with that of Glück, published in 1920,²⁷²⁷G. Glück, ‘Rubens’ Liebesgarten’, Jahrbuch der Kunshistorischen Sammlungen in Wien XXXV (1920-21), no. 2, pp. 49-98. that it was a copy.

Glück, followed recently by Van Hout,²⁸²⁸N. van Hout, Flemish Masters: Rubens, Van Dyck, Jordaens and their Contemporaries, Amsterdam/Zwolle 2002, p. 18 caption to fig. 19. praised the brushwork in the picture, and believed it to be the work of the studio, or a pupil, a view recently embraced also by the Rubenshuis Rubens in Private exhibition.²⁹²⁹N. van Hout, Flemish Masters: Rubens, Van Dyck, Jordaens and their Contemporaries, Amsterdam/Zwolle 2002, p. 18 followed by B. van Beneden (ed.), Rubens in Private: The Master Portrays his Family, Antwerp/London 2015, no. 28, entry bij Lieneke Nijkamp. The most recent judgement of the museum is that it emanated from Rubens’s circle; indeed, the support was available for use from 1626. But, the brushwork seems not to be reminiscent of Rubens’s studio in the last decade of his life; judging from a colour reproduction, a picture in the Palazzo Rospigliosi, Rome, recorded in an inventory of 1713, has a better claim to such a status.³⁰³⁰Oil on canvas, 44.7 x 35.8 cm; recorded in the Rospigliosi inventory of 1713, see D. Di Castro et al., Il Palazzo Pallavicini Rospigliosi: E la galleria Pallavicini, coll. cat. Rome 1999, no. 430, pp. 282-83, and illustrated in colour on p. 173. Another copy is in the Zornzammlingarna Mora, panel, 70.6 x 55 cm; see H.H. Brummer, ‘Ett porträtt av Rubens’ hustru i Zornsamlingarna’, in G. Cavalli-Björkman (ed.), Rubens i Sverige, Stockholm 1977, pp. 141-45. However, it is likely that the present picture was made directly after the Munich picture rather than after the copy of it in Rome. The lack of detail in the collar (for example) might indicate that the painting was made sometime after the execution of the original, when the varnish had discoloured sufficiently to obscure such detail.

The provenance of the original in Munich before its sale in 1698 is not known; it may have remained in the possession of the blood descendants of the artist and Helena Fourment, and that it came into Van Colen’s ownership through his wife, Helena’s niece Maria, whom he married in 1668 and who died in 1697. There is as yet no record of the Rijksmuseum copy before its listing in the Dutartre collection in 1787. For a visitor to Lucien Bonaparte’s collection in Rome in 1816, it was ‘not unlike a picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds’ (1723-1792).³¹³¹H.W. Williams, Travels in Italy Greece and the Ionian Islands, 2 vols., London 1820, II, p. 60. But this should not be taken as a realistic indication of the picture’s age (although it might explain Smith’s extravagant, unpublished admiration of it); the painting is more likely to have been made as a memorial for a descendant of the sitter, perhaps when the prototype was passed on by inheritance and before its sale in 1698.

The costume worn by the sitter has been described as a wedding dress thus implying that the original was painted circa 1630,³²³²Apparently first by Von Reber (in F. von Reber, Katalog der Gemälde-Sammlung der Königlichen älteren Pinakothek in München, Munich 1904, cited by Renger in K. Renger with C. Denk, Flämische Malerei des Barock in der Alten Pinakothek, Munich/Cologne 2002, under no. 340) and most recently by M. Jaffé, Rubens. Catalogo Completo, Milan 1989, no. 994. as the wedding took place on 6 December of that year. Gordenker has described the costume in the Munich prototype as ‘a white brocaded, basqued bodice with a stomacher and a skirt of the same fabric, virago sleeves tied at the elbows with strings of jewels and a black silk gown.’³³³³E.S. Gordenker, Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) and the Representation of Dress in Seventeenth-Century Portraiture, Turnhout 2001, p. 31; see also C.H. van Wyhe, ‘The Sartorial Ambitions of the Artist and his Wives: Identity and Attire in Rubens’ Family Portraits’, in B. van Beneden (ed.), Rubens in Private: The Master Portrays his Family, Antwerp/London 2015, pp. 99-119, esp. p. 103. The white brocade fabric of the dress – in fact perhaps silver and gold brocade – was in her view appropriate for a wedding, as would have been the sitter’s luxurious appearance (Gordenker described the jewellery worn as ‘remarkably rich’). But no veil is worn, and the costume is not an overall white or silver, the colour considered proper for noble wedding ceremonies.³⁴³⁴I. Groeneweg, ‘Court and City: Dress in the Age of Frederik Hendrik and Amalia’, in M. Keblusek and J. Zijlmans (eds.), Princely Display: The Court of Frederik Hendrik of Orange and Amalia van Solms, The Hague (Haags Historisch Museum) 1997, pp. 201-18, esp. pp. 201-02. The ring displayed on the little finger of the right hand (in the Munich picture) cannot be identified as a wedding ring.

Vlieghe, followed most recently by Logan,³⁵³⁵A.-M. Logan, Peter Paul Rubens: The Drawings, exh. cat. New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art) 2005, under no. 88. has been among those authorities to deny that the costume was that worn by the bride at her wedding. As yet, the questions posed by the costume – whether it was: a) that worn by the sitter as a bride, at the church ceremony; b) that it was that worn on her wedding day; or c) that it was not worn for such a special occasion – must remain unresolved, as was implicitly recognized by Renger.³⁶³⁶Renger in K. Renger with C. Denk, Flämische Malerei des Barock in der Alten Pinakothek, Munich/Cologne 2002, no. 340, by qualifying the term wedding dress. This need not affect the dating of the prototype, although the sequence of Rubens’s portraits of his second wife has not been established or agreed.

The sitter’s face in the Munich prototype of the present picture seems less mature than in the Vienna Het Pelsken, the Venus in the Prado Judgement of Paris or in the portrait in the Louvre, in which she steps out into the street. The preparatory drawing for it, in which the dress is simpler and the pose very slightly different, is in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen;³⁷³⁷A.-M. Logan, Peter Paul Rubens: The Drawings, exh. cat. New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art) 2005, no. 88. it seems likely to be contemporary with the full-face, half-length finished study in the Courtauld Institute, in which the sitter seems dressed for church.³⁸³⁸J.S. Held, Rubens: Selected Drawings, 2 vols., London 1959, II, no. 114, pl. 125. Logan believes that the full-length study is of circa 1631; for Held, the half-length drawing was of 1630-32,³⁹³⁹J.S. Held, Rubens: Selected Drawings, 2 vols., London 1959, II, no. 114. and Vlieghe has dated the Munich portrait circa 1631, believing that Helena was carrying her first child born in January 1632. The sprig of orange in her hair would thus allude to her fertility.

The sitter wears a string of pearls, pearl pendants, a jewel-encrusted clasp on her head and an elaborate brooch at her chest supported by a chain round her shoulder.⁴⁰⁴⁰Described by C.H. van Wyhe, ‘The Sartorial Ambitions of the Artist and his Wives: Identity and Attire in Rubens’ Family Portraits’, in B. van Beneden (ed.), Rubens in Private: The Master Portrays his Family, Antwerp/London 2015, pp. 99-119, esp. pp. 103-04, as ‘definitely of French origin’ and compared with a jewel in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, her fig. 5, by an ‘unknown French (?) artist c. 1620-30’, see also her note 26, p. 120; and J. Walrave, D. Scarisbrick and Frits Scholten, Een eeuw van schittering: diamantjuwelen uit de 17e eeuw, Antwerp 1993, pp. 188-21. Pointon has identified this breast jewel as probably that listed by the 1645 inventory of Rubens’s effects as ‘a large round jewel of diamonds, all [?] flat stones and sixteen triangles valued at 6900 guilders ’.⁴¹⁴¹The original reads: ‘een groote ronde bagge van diamanten, alle raviesteenen ende sestien triangelen rontsomme op gl 6,900’. See M. Pointon, ‘Peter Paul Rubens and the Mineral World’, Artipus et Historiae 79 (2019), pp. 229-65, esp. p. 231. Pointon notes that the jewel differs from that in the Victoria and Albert Museum referred to in note 40 by the ‘hooks on both sides’. The jewelled chain is fixed to one of these; its other end must be fixed to the loop on the back. She wore a similar but not identical pendant in the Courtauld Institute drawing and the Louvre painting referred to above; the jewellery is more sumptuous than any worn by Rubens’s first wife.

The pose in the Munich prototype brings to mind Anthony van Dyck’s (1599-1641) portrait of Isabella Brant;⁴²⁴²S.J. Barnes, N. de Poorter, O. Millar and H. Vey, Anthony van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, New Haven (Conn.)/London 2004, no. I.100. this may not have been fortuitous. It seems likely that Rubens portrayed his sumptuously arrayed new wife as a record of, and in celebration of, both their wedding and their marriage.

Although the present picture and a portrait by Van Dyck (SK-C-284) entered the Bonaparte collection separately, they came to be considered as pendants and were regarded as such by Smith and Van der Hoop.

Gregory Martin, 2022

H. Vlieghe, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIX (2): Portraits of Identified Sitters Painted in Antwerp, London 1987, no. 96b

1887a, no. 1223 (as Rubens); 1903, no. 2067 (as a repetition); 1934, no. 2067 (as a free repetition); 1976, p. 484, no. C 295 (as Rubens); 1992, p. 81, no. C 295 (as Circle of Rubens)

G. Martin, 2022, 'after Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of Helena Fourment (1614-1673), the Artist’s Second Wife, c. 1650', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5318