"Since the late 1950s the artistic fashion has been moving once again in favor of Rubens, as the appreciation of Baroque art has increased and spread. But Rubens is much more than the greatest Baroque painter of the North. His creative genius is of that comprehensive kind that speaks in different languages to different ages... Rubens oainted to give pleasure. He sought, through the medium of his art, to record the beauty of all created things."
- C. V. Wedgwood (in The World of Rubens)
- C. V. Wedgwood (in The World of Rubens)
"In no other branch of art is Rubens greater than in landscape; - the freshness and dewy light, the joyous and animated character which he has imparted to it, impressing on the level monotonous scenery of Flanders all the richness which belongs to its noblest features. Rubens delighted in phenomena - rainbows upon a stormy sky, - bursts of sunshine, - moonlight, - meteors, - and impetuous torrents mingling their sound with wind and wave."
- John Constable (as quoted in Making & Meaning: Rubens's Landscapes by Christopher Brown)
- John Constable (as quoted in Making & Meaning: Rubens's Landscapes by Christopher Brown)
"Faced with the daunting prospect of selecting one representative figure from the seventeenth century, I would eventually have little hesitation in choosing Rubens, whose life and work offer such eloquent testimony of both the spirit and the history of the period."
- Christopher White (in Peter Paul Rubens)
- Christopher White (in Peter Paul Rubens)
"In the landscapes, Rubens can explore what he believes and what he loves - providence watching over his family in Flanders. It was to make Flanders peaceful and prosperous that he traveled to the courts of Europe as diplomat as well as artist, and in the paintings we see its countryside as it was meant to be, fertile and sustaining, tended by man under the guidance of God, and, at the end of Rubens's life, providing a home for his family and himself."
- Neil MacGregor (in the Foreward of Making & Meaning: Rubens's Landscapes)
- Neil MacGregor (in the Foreward of Making & Meaning: Rubens's Landscapes)