Louis Thevenet

Painted in 1912, *After Mass* is regarded by Professor Bart Verschaffel as the ‘absolute masterpiece’ of Louis Thevenet, who produced nearly 1,000 paintings. It was this painting that the artist presented at the Ghent World’s Fair in 1913, the same year as his first solo exhibition at the Galerie Georges Giroux in Brussels. His work is rich in interior scenes – of churches, cafés, and his own successive homes in the Brussels metropolitan area. Most often, he depicts deserted rooms, inhabited only by the familiar objects of their occupants. But here, a baby dominates the composition, sitting enthroned in her highchair ‘like Christ in ancient religious art’ (B. Verschaffel). The model is undoubtedly Jeanneke, the daughter whom Thevenet and his wife Emma adopted shortly after her birth. After Mass depicts the return home – near the cat – following the religious service, signified by the missal placed on the table set with a tablecloth, alongside the gloves, hat, purse and umbrella that one sheds upon returning. In the centre, the spherical kettle reflects another presence, that of the painter or the viewer. On the right, one catches a glimpse of two steps leading to another room, where the stove is burning. Such situations and transitional spaces, oscillating between absence and presence, form the heart of Thevenet’s painting. The son of a close friend, Claude Lyr, reads into them an impulse to escape: ‘What shall we find in the thousand paintings left by Thevenet? Open doors, open windows, flashes of light, walking sticks, hats, umbrellas (…) all symbols or, if you prefer, symptoms of escape.” A salutary expansion sought in sacred rituals, such as Mass, or art: “When I paint, the devil retreats. ‘My art is my sign of the cross,’ Thevenet confided. Largely self-taught, under the benevolent mentorship of his painter friend Auguste Oleffe, *Après la messe* expresses his joy in painting: using a smooth, expressive brushstroke, he contrasts black and white whilst playing with flashes of bright colour. The hat’s ornamentation even serves as a pretext for him to indulge in a micro-firework display of abstract painting. 

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