Rubens, Poussin — Et les peintres du XVIIe siècle — Musée Jacquemart-André — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: September 24, 2010 → January 24, 2011

Rubens, Poussin and 17th century artists

This exhibition assembles around sixty paintings from some of the best private and public collections in Europe (Art museums in Lille, Nantes, Rennes, Oxford, Liège, and more). It offers a unique view of two great artistic movements of the 17th century: Flemish Baroque painting, of which Rubens is the chief protagonist, and the French Classical school led by Poussin and the influence they had on each other. The Jacquemart-André Museum has set out to write a new page in the history of art.

An exhibition of discovery

The exhibition’s primary aim is to highlight the importance of the Flemish movement in France at the beginning of the 17th century by showing the works of the great artists who were present on the French artistic scene at the time (Rubens, Pourbus, van Thulden, etc.). A comparison of their paintings with those of the Le Nain brothers or Lubin Baugin reveals the strong influence of the Flemish Baroque school on French artists.

The rest of the exhibition is devoted to the rise of French Classical art during the second half of the 17th century. It presents some new pictorial models, developed in France by Nicolas Poussin, Laurent de La Hyre, Eustache Le Sueur and Charles Le Brun, before being adopted by Flemish artists such as Bertholet Flemalle and Gérard de Lairesse. This is the note on which the exhibition finishes, thereby highlighting the reversal of influence which operated between these two schools during the 17th century.