As a colorist he may be called the painter of light, as Rembrandt is the painter of darkness. The creative fancy of Rubens was capable of conceiving every possible variety of subject at all fitted for the pencil, and the sphere was indeed ample from which his remarkable cultivation of mind enabled him to select. . . . I have no hesitation in pronouncing him the greatest of all modern painters when he had to deal with subjects depending on the momentary expression of powerfully exalted passion which can only be firmly seized and developed in the imagination.

GUSTAV F. WAAGEN.

RUBENS

I

One of those descriptions that are tenderly impressive because of their universal appeal is Carlyle's account of his departure from home on the morning when he started on his long walk of about a hundred miles to the university at Edinburgh. He was but a mere boy, not yet fourteen. The mother and father walked with him and his young companion to the brow of the nearby hill and there with tremulous voice bade the youngsters Godspeed. Between the dour Scot who thundered out his convictions on man's duty and the urbane Flemish master who loved beauty, there may seem to be little in common. the incident from Carlyle's life springs to my mind when I think of the noble-hearted mother of Rubens, a woman of rare sympathy and force of character, who on May 9, 1600, saw her son Paul ride out of Antwerp on his trip to beautiful Italy, that Mecca of youthful artists. He was twenty-three years old and had studied art under local masters, but what he had already gained in technique served but as an incentive to gain more. So behold him breaking home ties, and almost breaking his mother's heart, as she

But

sees her handsome son disappear never to return to her sight. Did she have a premonition that this was to be her last glimpse of her talented son? If she had, she herself was too self-sacrificing to stay the ambition of her dutiful and loving Paul Peter. He remained in Italy year after year, until one day he heard that his mother, now seventy-two years of age, was sick. He hastened home to see her; but news traveled so slowly in those days that when he reached his destination he found that his mother had passed away five days before he had heard of her sickness.

II

Both Antwerp and Cologne have claimed the honor of being the birthplace of Rubens, Cologne even having a fine old mansion with a marble tablet containing an inscription informing the world that here was born the great painter, but the man who made an epoch in the history of art was born June 29, 1577, in Siegen, Westphalia, a city now having a population of 25,000, but in Rubens's day but a small town. Why Rubens himself died supposing Cologne to be his birthplace, is due to an episode in his father's career which reflects no credit upon the father, but reveals the wifely devotion of a noble

woman.

Jan Rubens, the father, was a lawyer by profession, and at one time was an alderman in Antwerp. With the coming of the bloody Duke of Alva, wish