A Woman Churning

Peter Rubens

Summary

A reproduction produced by the Vasari Society of a drawing by Peter Paul Rubens. The drawing shows a woman standing to the left beside a large vat to the right. She has her hands above her head holding onto a wooden stick, which goes down into the vat. She is facing towards the right and looks down into the vat at the substance she is stirring. The woman is wearing a skirt that finished just above her ankles, and a brown bodice over a white shirt. Text from the accompanying booklet produced by the Vasari Society: "No. 15 PETER PAUL RUBENS (b. 1577; d. 1640) A WOMAN CHURNING Collection of the Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth. Acquired in 1754 from the Collection of Nicolaes Antoni Flinck (son of Govaert Flinck). Black, red and white chalk; 30.5 x 23.2 cm. (12 x 9 1/8 in.) A vigorous stoutly-built young woman churning. The same model appears in a landscape, with figures and cows in the Liechtenstein Collection at Vienna, carrying a milk-pail on her head, and in other paintings, though this study does not seem to have been used in any known picture. It is one of the finest of a very small group of drawings of subjects from farm life (Rooses, L'Œuvre de Rubens, Nos. 1583-1588). Compare the drawing of a man in a stable with two horses in the University Galleries, Oxford, reproduced by Mr. Colvin in Part I of Selected Drawings from Old Masters, Oxford, 1903, which is a study for the picture of 'The Prodigal Son' at Munich. The present study, like the Oxford drawing, is not catalogued by M. Rooses. L. B."