In This Case: Peter Paul Rubens May 25, 2007

In This Case is a series of periodic posts on art in the Luce Foundation Center, a visible art storage facility at the Smithsonian American Art Museum that displays more than 3,300 pieces in fifty-seven cases.

Peter Paul Rubens, Madonna and Child, about 1615-1618, oil on wood, 41 5/8 x 29 1/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.91

No, you're not reading that wrong: Peter Paul Rubens isn't appearing here because he has some newly revealed connection to the United States. The Flemish artist, knighted by both Charles I (of England) and Philip IV (kof Spain) was as Continental as they come. There's little to be said about this Rubens painting that applies to United States history: It was made just a few years before the Plymouth Colony was settled by the Pilgrims.

The Rubens painting is one of the oldest pieces in the Luce Center and in SAAM's collection. The painting came to the museum courtesy of John Gellatly, one of the Smithsonian's first major patrons. In the early part of the twentieth century, Gellatly assembled a collection of art that highlighted works produced by American masters: Dewing, Handerson, Hassam, Homer, Thayer, and Twachmtan, to name a few, and in particular Ryder.

America has never created art in isolation, and collectors like Gellatly were aware of the fact—perhaps even actively conscious of it in their decisions about what to buy. Gellatly, for one, felt that American masters stood up to the standard set by anyone producing in Europe, and he bought the former alongside the latter. When he donated his art collection to the Smithsonian, there was no American Art Museum (rather there was a National Collection of Fine Arts). His collection joined prominent American paintings with European masterpieces, which, in Gellatly's opinion, showed the strengths—even the superiority—of the American works.

• Peter Paul Rubens, Luce Foundation Center for American Art,
  Smithsonian American Art Museum