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In the mean time Rubens' first wife died, after a union of seventeen years, in 1626; and four years later, in 1630, the painter, when he was a man of fifty years, re-married another connection of his own, Helena Fourment, a girl only in her sixteenth year. Both of his wives were handsome, fair, full-formed Flemish beauties.
It was on this occasion, too, that he received the honour of knighthood from Charles I., who is said to have presented him with his own sword. In the following year, 1630, Rubens married his second wife, Helena Fourment, who was only sixteen years old he was now fifty-two or fifty-three.
The name of the second was Helena Fourment, and she is called by one author "a spicy blonde." Certainly she was very gay, big, and robust, and only sixteen years old when she married Rubens who was then a man of fifty-three. Of one picture, "The Straw Hat," for which he is supposed to have used his wife's sister as model, he was so fond that he would not sell it at any price.
He portrayed Helena Fourment and Isabella Brandt in all stages of disarray and gowns. He put them together on the same canvas. He did not hesitate to show them to the world in all their opulent nudity. Their white skins, large eyes with wide gaze, their lovely children appear in religious and mythologic pictures at every turn you make in this museum. You become too familiar with them.
But inasmuch as the brilliant Helena Fourment, second wife of Rubens, whose picture was so often painted by her artist-husband, married again, why shouldn't Madame Van Dyck follow the example? It is barely possible that Charles Lamb was right when he declared that no woman married to a genius ever believed her husband to be one.
On the L. are some excellent works by Rubens: 2075, Flight of Lot; 2077, Adoration of the Magi; 2113, Portrait of Helen Fourment, the artist's second wife, and their two children; 2144, Lady's Portrait, said to be that of Suzanne Fourment. The ignoble Kermess, 2115, will be familiar to readers of Zola.
It may well have suggested to Rubens, who must have seen it among the King's possessions on the occasion of his visit to London, his superb, yet singularly unrefined, Hélène Fourment in a Fur Mantle, now also in the Vienna Gallery. The great portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino in the Uffizi belong, as has already been noted, to 1537.
Rubens' second wife, Helena Fourment, to whom he had been married ten years, survived him, a widow at twenty-six years of age Rubens' portrait is even better known than those of his wives, for, as I have said of Raphael in his popularity, Rubens in his life is the beau-ideal of a painter to the many.
The Calvary is a splendid canvas, full of movement and containing several members of the well-known Rubens family. Such devotion is touching. You find yourself looking for Isabella Brandt and Helena Fourment among the angels that hover in the sky above the martyred St. Lieven. There are nearly a dozen Van Dycks, of prime quality all.
It is both mellow and magnificent, and unless history or Rubens lied the lady must have been as mild as mother's milk. The Three Graces, executed during the latter years of the Flemish master, is Rubens at his pagan best. These stalwart and handsome females, without a hint of sleek Italian delicacy, include Rubens's second wife, Helena Fourment, the ox-eyed beauty.
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