Portrait of Susanna Lunden

The woman is Susanna Fourment, daughter of an Antwerp merchant who was a friend and client of Rubens. He most likely painted her in the early 1620s, around the time of her second marriage, in 1622, to Arnold Lunden. She looks straight out at you from under the brim of a dark hat. The painting picked up a French nickname, Le Chapeau de Paille, the straw hat, which is almost certainly a mistake, since the hat is felt, not straw. There is a family thread here worth knowing. Eight years after this, in 1630, the widowed Rubens married Susanna's youngest sister Helene, who was 16 to his 52. In the 19th century the portrait belonged to the British statesman Robert Peel, and it was sold from his family's collection to the National Gallery in London in 1871.