Peter Paul Rubens in the Hermitage Rooms at Somerset House, London

On 20 September, 2003, at the Hermitage Rooms of Somerset House opened a major exhibition of sketches and drawings of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). This will be the first project to result from the alliance between the Courtauld Institute of Art and the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, announced earlier this year. The exhibition is generously supported by the Edmond J. Safra Philanthropic Foundation, Mrs Charles Wrightsman, the Deborah Loeb Brice Foundation, and the Founding Members of the Walpole Circle.

The exhibition brings together two celebrated and complementary collections of the sketches that have long been regarded as one of the most compelling and remarkable aspects of Rubens' work. It aims to show how Rubens developed his pictorial ideas and compositions. With the addition of loans from the National Gallery and Dulwich College Picture Gallery, London, and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the exhibition will comprise some forty oil sketches supplemented by ten related drawings and a small number of finished paintings.

The exhibition will bring the visitor closer to the creative moment and the development of the artist's pictorial ideas and illustrate the wide range of Rubens' preparatory work throughout his life from loose sketches through to more fully worked pieces. It will not only offer insights into the genesis of some of this major artist’s most important compositions but also further the understanding of his innovative and original use of the oil sketch.

The Hermitage Rooms at Somerset House, London, were opened on 25 November, 2000, by HRH The Prince of Wales - the first exhibition space to be created in the West to show works from the magnificent collections of the State Hermitage Museum. The Hermitage Rooms are now under the direction of the Courtauld Institute of Art as part of a strategic alliance between the Courtauld and the State Hermitage Museum.

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