How did Rubens influence Peasants Returning from Market and The Harvest Wagon?

Around 1760, Peter Paul Rubens became a primary influence on Thomas Gainsborough’s landscape work, replacing his earlier interest in Dutch painters. This shift is evident in two of his notable works:

• Peasants Returning from Market: Gainsborough adopted a style characterized by rich color and beautiful, creamy pastel shades, directly reflecting the influence of Rubens.1
• The Harvest Wagon: The influence of Rubens is seen in the fluency of the drawing and the grand scale of the beech trees, which contrast sharply with the smaller oaks typical of Suffolk. Furthermore, the group of figures depicted in the cart was based on Rubens’s Descent from the Cross, a work that Gainsborough had copied.1

These paintings demonstrate how Gainsborough blended real-world observation with the idealized aesthetic he admired in Rubens’s compositions.1