Pastoral Scene (after Rubens)

Leibl's 1870 copy after Rubens — 'Pastoral Scene' — represents the essential academic practice of learning from Old Masters through direct copying. Leibl visited the Alte Pinakothek in Munich regularly, and its Rubens holdings were among the most extensive in Europe; the Munich Rubens collection provided German painters with direct access to the Flemish master's technique. For Leibl specifically, Rubens offered lessons in the handling of full-bodied figures, complex multi-figure compositions, and the animating quality of paint — the way thick, rapid strokes could give flesh its warmth and movement. That Leibl chose a pastoral scene rather than a religious or mythological subject reflects his own orientation toward figures in naturalistic settings. The copy would have been an exercise in understanding Rubens's technique from the inside — mixing colors to achieve those warm flesh tones, replicating the structure of impasto passages, learning how Rubens organized complex light sources.

Copying Rubens required Leibl to temporarily adopt a technique somewhat at odds with his own developing realism: Rubens's paint is more fluid, more dynamically applied, and more concerned with decorative surface energy than Leibl's careful observation-based approach.