Near the top of our list of exhibitions we want to go and see: retrospectives of relatively neglected women artists. Also right up there: Nordic painters we would like to learn more about. So it's no surprise we were keen to explore Harriet Backer (1845-1932): The Music of Colours at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Backer was Norway's most renowned female painter of the 19th century, if little known outside her homeland. We must have seen her work in the past in the old National Museum in Oslo, but she'll have been one of many unfamiliar names. Now, though, she's getting the full retrospective treatment with a show that's already been seen in the Norwegian capital and in Stockholm. Backer's paintings are mostly intimate depictions of interiors, both domestic and church. There's a calmness to them, and often a very interesting treatment of light, with Impressionism showing an influence from time she spent in France. One or two of the pictures on show are
Let us take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of Ostend, in the company of an insomniac artist with stomach ulcers. Things appear odd at night, eerie lights down deserted streets and along the promenade, when everyone else in the Queen of Belgian seaside resorts has gone to bed.
Welcome to the world of Léon Spilliaert at the Royal Academy in London, the latest in the RA's spate of exhibitions featuring European artists you've possibly barely heard of but who are rather big names in their home countries.
Spilliaert was born in Ostend in 1881, and though he moved away to Bruges to study and later to Brussels and Paris, it's his home town that seems to have inspired his most intriguing pictures. He worked mostly using a wash of Indian ink, with occasional pastel and coloured pencil, to produce often haunting, otherworldly images.
Here in Dyke at Night, Reflected Lights, the town is asleep, apart of course from the solitary wandering artist. There's a broken blanket of dark cloud above the North Sea, with the beams off a few pinpoints of light suggesting a squall of rain has just swept Ostend.
And the same motifs recur in this view of Hofstraat, a road leading down to the harbour. That menacing cloud, and a solitary light reflected down the centre of the street.
The same props are seen again and again -- a bentwood chair, the coathooks on the wall, a calendar showing the date. November 5 may have been a particularly bad day for the artist in terms of health; he looks far older than his 27 years.
A series of paintings Spilliaert made of his Bedroom also suggest his discomfort, his inability to get any rest. The depict heavy wooden furniture, a clinical-looking bedstead and white sheets, conveying a sense of a room without any expression of personality.
There are elements of Edvard Munch in Spilliaert's work, elements too perhaps of Félix Vallotton, the Swiss artist whose paintings we saw in these same galleries at the RA last year. There's less narrative than with Vallotton, though. Individuals are rarely seen close up in any detail.
Here's one of those pictures that has a particularly Munch-like feel to it, A Gust of Wind. A girl holds on tight to a railing on the promenade, her hair and skirt blown aside in the sudden flurry. Her face is contorted not so much in a scream of anxiety as in a shriek of surprise.
Spilliaert used a rather more elaborate technique a few years later in Woman at the Shoreline, delineating areas of sand, water and foam and the form of the woman's dress and hat in a remarkably abstracted way.
He was clearly drawn to odd views, surprising angles. The Royal Galleries at Ostend disappear in a row of columns along the beachfront, while elsewhere a man Returning from a Swim is glimpsed as if from a balloon above the brown sand.
We really enjoyed about half this exhibition, but we found Spilliaert's book illustrations and his later works, which make up much of the other half, far less enticing. Spilliaert found happiness in his mid-30s with a local woman when he remained in Ostend during the German occupation in World War I, and they moved to Brussels. He seems to have created his most interesting work in his home town, but it's a very different Ostend -- a darker place -- from the one portrayed by its other famous son, James Ensor -- all gaudy skeletons and carnival-goers -- in another RA show a couple of years ago.
From London, the show will move on to the Musée D'Orsay in Paris from June 15 to September 13.
Léon Spilliaert, Hofstraat, Ostend, 1908, Private collection, courtesy of Francis Maere Fine Arts, Ghent
Léon Spilliaert, Self-Portrait, 1907, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image: © 2019 The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence
Léon Spilliaert, Self-Portrait, 5 November, 1908, Private collection
Léon Spilliaert, A Gust of Wind, 1904, Mu.ZEE, Ostend. © www.lukasweb.be -- Art in Flanders vzw. Photo: Hugo Maertens
Léon Spilliaert, Woman at the Shoreline, 1910, Private collection. Photo: © Cedric Verhelst
Welcome to the world of Léon Spilliaert at the Royal Academy in London, the latest in the RA's spate of exhibitions featuring European artists you've possibly barely heard of but who are rather big names in their home countries.
Spilliaert was born in Ostend in 1881, and though he moved away to Bruges to study and later to Brussels and Paris, it's his home town that seems to have inspired his most intriguing pictures. He worked mostly using a wash of Indian ink, with occasional pastel and coloured pencil, to produce often haunting, otherworldly images.
And the same motifs recur in this view of Hofstraat, a road leading down to the harbour. That menacing cloud, and a solitary light reflected down the centre of the street.
Both these pictures date from 1908, during a period when Spilliaert had returned to live with his parents. He produced numerous self-portraits in his glass-roofed studio, looking a haunted figure with sunken eyes and a shock of blond hair. He does have something of the night about him, doesn't he?
There are elements of Edvard Munch in Spilliaert's work, elements too perhaps of Félix Vallotton, the Swiss artist whose paintings we saw in these same galleries at the RA last year. There's less narrative than with Vallotton, though. Individuals are rarely seen close up in any detail.
Here's one of those pictures that has a particularly Munch-like feel to it, A Gust of Wind. A girl holds on tight to a railing on the promenade, her hair and skirt blown aside in the sudden flurry. Her face is contorted not so much in a scream of anxiety as in a shriek of surprise.
Practicalities
Léon Spilliaert runs until May 25 at the Royal Academy on Piccadilly in central London. It's open daily from 1000 to 1800, with lates on Fridays until 2200. Full-price tickets are £14, or £12 without a Gift Aid donation. Online booking is available here. The RA is a few minutes' walk from Green Park and Piccadilly Circus Tube stations.From London, the show will move on to the Musée D'Orsay in Paris from June 15 to September 13.
Images
Léon Spilliaert, Dyke at Night, Reflected Lights, 1908, Musée D'Orsay, Paris. Photo: © Musée d'Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Patrice SchmidtLéon Spilliaert, Hofstraat, Ostend, 1908, Private collection, courtesy of Francis Maere Fine Arts, Ghent
Léon Spilliaert, Self-Portrait, 1907, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image: © 2019 The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence
Léon Spilliaert, Self-Portrait, 5 November, 1908, Private collection
Léon Spilliaert, A Gust of Wind, 1904, Mu.ZEE, Ostend. © www.lukasweb.be -- Art in Flanders vzw. Photo: Hugo Maertens
Léon Spilliaert, Woman at the Shoreline, 1910, Private collection. Photo: © Cedric Verhelst
Léon Spilliaert, Returning from a Swim, 1907, Private collection
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