Lawrence Gowing Slade Professor of Fine Art at University College, London, is the author of several books on painting, including Vermeer and Turner: Imagination and Reality. A retrospective exhibition of his paintings will be held at the Serpentine Gallery from 26 March to 24 April.
The idea of the painter as a power of nature, an organ of creation in himself, has been as deeply-rooted and long-lasting as anything in the Western legend of the artist. Rubens was every kind of power. He was the instrument of divinity, the tool of statecraft, the agent of dynastic aspirations, the wielder of philoprogenitive potency until the last month of his life and the progenitor not only of children but of generative images to match.
In England, where the opposite can easily seem to be the case, there is always someone around to say that the visual arts matter. Not just that they are life-enhancing or give pleasure, but that...
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