Mist descends at dusk along the path through a forest. Pale water, motionless beneath a footbridge, holds the last of the light. Pollarded willows raise their amputated arms, as if in warning, while slender elms lead invitingly into the distance. It is a scene of ominous enchantment – should you stay or should you go?
Peter Paul Rubens, flushed with a lifetime’s success, has bought a country manor outside Brussels. He takes a sheet of oatmeal paper out into the grounds with a stick of charcoal. The drawing, made purely for his own purposes, one feels, is so mysteriously beautiful it stops visitors in their tracks at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford: Rubens in private, his fascination with the landscape now become ours. It is a crossroads all of its own in this enthralling show.
