Nissen Richards Studio has worked with the Wallace Collection on the historic reunion of two great masterpieces by Peter Paul Rubens, brought together for the first time in over two hundred years. The two paintings – ‘The Rainbow Landscape’ and ‘A View of het Steen in the Early Morning’ – have now been reunited as part of the Wallace’s ‘Rubens: Reuniting the Great Landscapes’ exhibition, with the former an existing part of the Wallace’s collection and the latter on loan from The National Gallery.

The two paintings had been kept together in Rubens’ own collection before being brought to London in 1803 and separated, with The Rainbow Landscape eventually entering the Wallace Collection and A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning becoming part of the National Gallery collection. The companion paintings, dating from c 1636, show Rubens’s newly-acquired manor house and estate, Het Steen, at Elewijt in Belgium.

Nissen Richards Studio’s work on the project centred on environmental graphics, creating text panels, the background walls’ colour scheme and playful interventions that play on the details of the paintings, from rainbows to passing ducks, to create a narrative and bring out the personality of the paintings, before visitors see the two masterpieces together.