‘Every single work is a masterpiece’: the once-in-a-lifetime exhibition of the greatest Flemish drawings

A new show brings together historic sketches from Bruegel to Rubens and more, capturing fleeting snapshots of everyday 16th- and 17th-century life

The women gather in a circle, talking intensely and unselfconsciously, their attention passing from one animated face to another as the conversation darts around the group. They seem completely unaware, from a window above the courtyard where they’re chatting, the artist Jacques Jordaens is sketching them in& quick red chalk and brown ink.

It is 1659, Antwerp, and, according to Jordaens’ scribbled note at the bottom of the paper, these so-called “gossip aunts” are discussing local political “disturbances” – perhaps the recent strike of the painters’ guild. “It’s a snapshot of daily life that you don’t usually see,” says An Van Camp, the curator of Bruegel to Rubens: Great& Flemish Drawings at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum.