The Rubens House > Museum > History > Cavendish Riding School
Cavendish Riding School
Contact
Do you have any questions, comments or suggestions?
After Rubens’s death in 1640, his second wife, Helena Fourment, continued to live in the Wapper for several years.
From 1648 to 1660, she rented the house to William and Margaret Cavendish, who had moved to Antwerp during the English civil war. They set up a riding school in Rubens’s former house and it attracted visitors from far and wide. When the Cavendishes left in 1660, Rubens’s heirs sold the house.
In Rubens’s lifetime
In 1610, two years after his return from Italy, Rubens and his wife Isabella Brant bought a house with land on the Wapper.
The house becomes a museum
From the second half of the eighteenth century, the Rubens House was subjected to various renovations and was somewhat forgotten.
The Rubens House today
As an adjunct to the Van Dyck year in 1999, the architect Stéphane Beel designed a functional pavilion in front of the artist’s house.