Return from the Harvest, c.1635 by Peter Paul Rubens
Canvas Print - 13839-RPP

Dated April 1827, Eckermann notes in his Conversations with Goethe that he and the poet viewed a landscape by Rubens in his home. According to his, though not entirely accurate, description, this must have been a reproduction of the 'Return from the Field' reproduced here. To Eckermann's opinion that Rubens "must have copied the picture entirely from nature", Goethe responded with a profound insight into the master's work:"In any case, such a perfect picture has never been seen in nature, and we owe this composition to the poetic spirit of the painter. But the great Rubens had such an extraordinary memory that he carried the image of the whole of nature in his mind, and it, with all its details, was always at his disposal. Hence the verisimilitude of the whole and the single, so that it seems to us that everything is a pure copy of nature."

Yet at the heart of Rubens's landscapes also lie detailed studies worked from life. For example, the artist borrowed the motif of the uprooted tree to the left of the Dresden painting "Boar Hunt" from a carefully executed drawing based on an immediate impression of nature. Also for the painting under consideration here - which, as G. Gluck, betrays the strong influence of Peter Bruegel's Haycock (in Prague) - he used an earlier drawing: the cart loaded with sheaves of wheat is exactly reproduced on the left of the picture, but now drawn by two horses. While this chalk drawing is a study in life, another sheet, depicting peasants returning from the fields, should be seen as a preparatory detailed sketch that the master made for the group of figures in his painting. The Baroque painter sought to convey the landscape as a unity so that the viewer would feel it as a unity as well. There is, therefore, no division into independent, alternating zones, such as the old painting used; a diagonally winding road runs through the flat grassy area, the direction of which is emphasized in depth by the movement of the horse-drawn cart and the flock of sheep, as well as by the drifting clouds. The painting's buoyant mood comes not least from the warm glow of the evening twilight, which descends peacefully over nature and people. The peasants, whom Rubens often depicted at work and in unbridled revelry, are also presented as happy, contented people, deeply connected to nature.