Portrait d'Hélène Fourment avec deux de ses enfants

Rubens married Helena Fourment in 1630, when she was 16 and he was 53 and one of the most sought-after painters in Europe. This is her a few years later, around 1636, with two of their small children: their daughter Clara Johanna standing at her side and the baby Frans on her lap. It was never a commission. Rubens painted his young family for himself, quickly and tenderly, and left parts of it barely finished, which is why the picture feels caught rather than posed. He had only a few years left and died in 1640. Louis XVI bought the painting for the French royal collection in 1784, which is how it came to the Louvre.