Portrait of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel

c. 1629–30

Rubens made this sketch of Thomas Howard while on a diplomatic mission to England, sent by Philip IV of Spain to improve relations between the two countries. A discerning connoisseur, Howard admired and collected works by Rubens and other artists of the period. This expressive ink and wash drawing served as a study for a life-size oil portrait of Howard, now in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

Medium	brush and brown ink, dark brown oil color(?), brown and gray wash, heightened with white and touches of red wash
Dimensions	Overall: 18 1/4 x 14 in. (46.4 x 35.6 cm)
Object Number	1955.991
Acquisition	Acquired by Sterling and Francine Clark before 1955
Status	Off View

Image Caption

Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, c. 1629–30, brush and brown ink, dark brown oil color(?), brown and gray wash, heightened with white and touches of red wash . Clark Art Institute, 1955.991

Select Bibliography

London: Grosvenor Gallery.. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Exhibit Twelve: Dutch and Flemish Masters. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1960. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Exhibit Thirty-one: Drawings of the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: 1965. Tate Gallery, London.. The Age of Charles I: Painting in England, 1620-1649. Nov. 15, 1972-Jan. 14, 1973. Cat. by Oliver Miller. Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art.. Rubenism. Jan. 30-Feb. 23, 1975. Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Belgium. P. P. Rubens: Paintings, Oil Sketches, Drawings. June 29-Sept. 30, 1977. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.. Drawing in England from Hilliard to Hogarth. Sept. 19-Nov. 8, 1987; British Museum, summer 1987. Cat. by Lindsay Stainton and Christopher White. Davis Museum, Wellesley College. Flemish Drawings in North American Collections. Oct. 15-Nov. 28, 1993; Cleveland Museum of Art, Jan. 4-Feb. 20, 1994. Cat by Anne-Marie Logan. Brooke, David S. Master Drawings: Robert Sterling Clark as a Collector. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1995. Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Titian and Rubens: Power, Politics, and Style. Jan. 23-April 26, 1998. Cat. by Hilliard Goldfarb, David Freedberg, and Manuela Mena Marques. Gustav Gluck and Franz Martin Haberditzl. Die Handzeichnungen von Peter Paul Rubens.. Berlin: J. Bard.. 1928. Glück, Gustav. "Rubens as Portrait Painter." Burlington Magazine 76, no. 447 (June 1940): 17383. Marnix Gijsen (Jan-Albert Goris and Julius S. Held).. Rubens in America.. New York: Pantheon.. 1947.. London: Royal Academy.. Flemish Art. (Exh.cat.). 1953/54.. R. F. C.. "Williamstown, Mass.: Olandesi e fiamminghi alla collezione Clark.". Emporium, 133.. (1961).. Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann. Great Drawings of All Time, vol. 2: German, Flemish and Dutch.. New York: Shorewood.. 1962. David Piper.. Catalogue of Seventeenth-Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, 1625-1714.. Cambridge: Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery at the University Press.. 1963.. Ludwig Burchard and R. A. d'Hulst.. Rubens Drawings.. Brussels: Arcade Press.. 1863.. Aymar, Gordon C. The Art of Portrait Painting. Philadelphia: Chilton Books,1967. Christopher White.. Rubens and His World.. London: Thames and Hudson.. 1968.. Marianne Bernhard.. Rubens, Handzeichnungen.. Munich: Südwest Verlag.. 1977.. Winslow Ames.. The Mastery of Drawing. 2 vol. (Eng. ed. of Joseph Meder, Die Handzeichnung/Ihre Technik und Entwicklung).. New York: Abaris Books.. 1978.. Brooks, John H. Highlights: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1981. Faison, S. Lane, Jr. The Art Museums of New England: Massachusetts. Vol. 2. Revised edition of Faison, Guide to the Art Museums of New England, 1958. Godine Guide 3. Boston: David R. Godine, 1982. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum.. Patronage and Collecting in the Seventeenth-Century: Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel.. Nov. 1985-Jan. 1986.. Julius S. Held.. Rubens: Selected Drawings, 2nd ed.. London: John Calmann and King.. 1986.. Philip P. Fehl.. "The Ghost of Homer: Observations on Rubens's 'Portrait of the Earl of Arundel.'". Genway Court (Gardner Museum annual report).. Summer 1987.. Godfrey, Richard T. Wenceslaus Hollar: A Bohemian Artist in England. New Havenand London: Yale Center for British Art and Yale University Press. 1994. Kern, Steven, et al. The Clark: Selections from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1996. Ganz, James A. "Old Masters in the Clark Collection, Part II: Prints and Drawings" The Magazine Antiques 62, no. 4 (October 1997): 51015. Logan, Anne-Marie and Michiel C. Plomp. Peter Paul Rubens: The Drawings. Albertina Museum, Vienna, September 14-December 5, 2004;The Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 14- April 3, 2005. The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press. 2004:pp. 233, 235; cat no. 80. Donovan, Fiona. Rubens and England. Yale Univeristy Press. 2004:p. 68 image 28. Haverkamp-Begemann, Egbert, Standish D. Lawder, and Charles W. Talbot, Jr. Drawings from the Clark Art Institute: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Robert Sterling Clark Collection of European and American Drawings, Sixteenth Through Nineteenth Centuries, at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown. 2 volumes. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964. Butler, Joseph T. "The AMerican Way with Art." Connoisseur 171, no. 688 (June 1969): 144–47.

Provenance

Collection of G. H. (L. 1160 {as of an unknown collector, first half 18th century, perhaps Guillaume Hubert});* Jonathan Richardson Sr. (L. 2184, difficult to distinguish in left bottom corner; sale London, January 22, 1747); Thomas Hudson (L. 2432; sale London, Langford, March 15–26, 1779, no. 45, to Lord Selsey); Lord Selsey (sale London, Sotheby, 1872, to Roupell); Robert P. Roupell (L. 2234, on reverse; sale London, Christie, July 12–14, 1887, no. 1120); Private Collection, London (bought by Robert Sterling Clark, 1926). *"L." refers to F. Lugt, Les Marques de collections de dessins et d'estampes, Amsterdam, 1921 and Supplément, The Hague, 1956.