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FILLETES SUR LA PLAGE

89 by 70 cm.

signed

indian ink and wash, pastel, coloured wax crayons and coloured pencils on card

Executed 1912-1913.

EXHIBITED

Tokyo, Bridgestone Museum of Art, Léon Spilliaert, april-june 2003; Himeji, Himeji City Museum of Art, june-july 2003; Nagoya, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, august-september 2003, exh. cat., pp. 90- 91, illustrated

LITERATURE

F. Legrand, Léon Spilliaert et son époque, Tielt/Bussum 1981
A. Adriaens-Pannier, Léon Spilliaert of de schoonheid van een wijs hart (Léon Spilliaert ou la beauté de l'intelligence de coeur), Antwerp 1998, no. 47, p. 26, illustrated

NOTE

Léon Spilliaert was born in Ostend, a mondain city at the Belgian coast. The original and individual kind of symbolism he created, tinged by expressionism, was after his stay in Paris in 1904 strongly influenced by artists like Odilon Redon, Edvard Munch and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. His insomnia, caused by a stomach ulcer, gave his works also a certain nocturnal and fantastic character. With a strong individual manner of working -- he rarely used oil paint and preferred (mixtures of) gouaches, watercolours and pastels -- and approach, Spilliaert became a master in creating rather unreal atmospheres.

In several of his works, expecially around 1910, Spilliaert depicted young schoolgirls, intrigued as he was by the peculiarity, light-hearteness, innocence and simplicity of these girls. In most of these works, the girls are quite anonymous, but in Fillettes sur la plage one of them turned herself around, candidly but nevertheless looking a bit frightened and astonished -- maybe by the somewhat ludicrous swimming-instructrice in the background. By using white pastel for some typical details like the bonnets of the girls, he knew to emphasise the freshness of the scene in a splendid and vivid way.