Lean Rubens show at the RA makes me hungry for more

The new Rubens exhibit at the Royal Academy seems to be based on a very odd premise:  You don't like Rubens.  The curators seem to believe you find him a bombastic lightweight, and don't take him seriously.  Their job is to rehabilitate him in your eyes, and they've decided to do this by making the show all about how he influenced others.

Which is, presumably, why the first paintings you see when you walk into this show are … Constables.

I can't complain of deception, because the exhibit does exactly what the title says.  Rubens and His Legacy:  Van Dyck to Cezanne.  As a piece of art historical education demonstrating how one artist influences others, it's interesting.  And if, perchance, you didn't take Rubens seriously before the exhibit, you'll see a compelling argument about his role.  But I wanted more of the man himself.

He doesn't need any rehabilitation in my eyes; I love Rubens.  I'm besotted by his lush colours, the grandiose stage settings he uses to frame his people and the lavish costumes they wear.  I think there are few better at bringing human flesh to palpable life on a canvas, and have always appreciated the round, fleshy reality of his women.  (I've never found myself on the pages of modern magazines, but I'm there in his 17th c brush strokes.)  I'm fascinated by his career as a diplomat, and how he balanced art and politics.  I've always been smitten by the awe-inspiring scale at which he so often worked.  And I adore him as a storyteller, so many of his works being almost film-like in their scope.

Surely that's enough to put together a blockbuster show just on the man himself?  Perhaps, but you won't get it here.  There are a handful of great paintings, but none that made me think "wow, I've always wanted to see that, I'm so glad they were able to talk Museum X into lending it."  Ironically for an artist who's all about abundance, I came out of the show hungry for more.  There's simply not enough Rubens here.  And far too much average work from others, assembled to pound you over the head with the show's key argument.

There are times the conceit does work well.  Hanging the Constables next to some of Rubens' lesser-known landscape work gives a new appreciation for the Dutch master's skies and does indeed show the English artist's debt.  The section on power makes it obvious how Van Dyck used lessons from his teacher, Rubens, to become the greatest PR man the English monarchy has ever had.  (In fact, I wished the curators had created something more like the Tate's wonderful Van Dyck show in 2009, which I wrote about here.)

In the lust room … which seemed a misnomer for me when it came to collecting the master's lushly sensual nudes … some Renoirs show how the Frenchman brought his women to life using the same approach to layering colour.  But we also have to put up with a lot of other lesser copyists of Rubenesque flesh.

The room centred on the Garden on Love is probably the best in the show (pictured above), with Rubens' beguiling canvas of that name captivating attention for long minutes.  The argument that the 18th c French style depicting nobles cavorting in sylvan landscapes dotted with classical follies comes from this source seems sound.  But all hanging a Watteau next to the Rubenesque original really does is make the French descendant look insipid.  You want to be in Rubens' garden, partying alongside his people.  You look at Watteau's gang, and you understand why the peasants wanted them dragged to the guillotine.

There are other themed rooms where I think they push the argument too far.  We are confronted with the master's Christ on the Straw and told it's an iconic arrangement other artists followed.  Really?  You can find moving scenes of Christ being lowered from the cross in Western art for centuries earlier.  His is beautiful, but hardly unique.  I had the same objection in the violence room, where it seems we're meant to believe that Rubens invented the genre of the lion hunt.  I don't doubt Delecroix and Landseer (both hanging here) looked to the Dutchman for inspiration, but they could have followed an artistic tradition back to ancient Assyrian art.  (The lion hunt from the palace at Nimrud is one of the British Museum's star sights.)  It felt like the curators were belabouring a point.

Meanwhile, they miss a chance to make a more significant one … in my humble opinion … about Rubens as the superlative storyteller.  Tiger, Lion and Leopard Hunt is, with the Garden, the other blockbuster painting here.  It immediately assaults your senses, in the best possible way, with the excitement of seven exotic men twisting, writhing and straining in their struggle against the mixed pack of big cats.  The tiger sinking his teeth into the shoulder of the central rider is horrifying.  The men are fighting for their lives, the horses' eyes are bulging in terror.  Our sympathies are with them.  And yet.  Look deeper.  As your eyes take in the detail, you see the mother tiger crouching over two cubs, a third in her mouth, the trio so young and defenceless their eyes aren't even open yet.  The action shifts, and now you're cheering on a pack defending their young from callous, pompous trophy hunters.  Like so many of Rubens' best scenes, the longer you stare at it, the more variations of stories it tells.

The show is worth seeing, but if you're seeking Rubens, its concept makes it an amuse bouche rather than a full meal.  If you want to feel as sated as a Rubenesque woman, head off to the Banqueting House immediately after and drink in the full glory of his ceiling there.  Then you'll get the great man as he is meant to be seen, without the distraction of others.

Rubens and His Legacy is on at the Royal Academy until 10 April