Léon Spilliaert

*La Nuit* brings together motifs dear to the Ostend-based artist Léon Spilliaert: the sea, the seafront promenade, and the Royal Galleries of his hometown. Spilliaert sometimes favours deserted landscapes; here, he includes a man seen from behind, staggering, a wavering figure amidst the straight lines of the columns and street lamps. As is often the case, the largely self-taught artist mixes techniques: for his *La Nuit*, Spilliaert combines Indian ink, wash, brushwork and pastel on paper, which he prefers to oil on canvas, deemed ‘sticky… incapable of either lightness or transparency’.The year is 1908; his personal assimilation of fin-de-siècle Symbolism is expressed in the mystery and silence that pervade this twilight vision, plunging recognisable elements of Ostend into a dreamlike atmosphere. But at the very dawn of the 20th century, Spilliaert also established himself as an artist of remarkable modernity, through his exceptional sense of synthesis (a geometrised space, an essentially monochrome palette, large expanses devoid of detail), and the expressive power that emanates from it.The subject has often been linked to his own life, as Spilliaert frequently took night-time walks. With this scene plunged into darkness, Spilliaert also follows the tradition of nocturnes, practised by many artists, from Whistler to Degouve de Nuncques. Art historian Denis Laoureux argues that the nocturne allows Spilliaert to ‘blur the boundaries of things’ and thus to ‘derealise the landscapes’. Laoureux describes the nocturnal spectre in La Nuit as ‘a disembodied silhouette in a state of imbalance, conveying a sense of inner vertigo’. The undulating figure with its enigmatic gesture has already been the subject of much discussion, leading Anne Adriaens-Pannier to suggest “an incantatory movement”, and Sébastien Mullier to see in it “an elegant figure leaning on the columns (…) in a trance-like state, overcome by intoxication or somnambulism”.By capitalising on this lack of definition, Spilliaert draws us towards uncertain horizons, far removed from a mimetic representation of reality. This dreamlike detachment is further emphasised by the selective application of an ultramarine blue pastel outline around the forms, which becomes apparent as one approaches the work. 

This translation has been automatically generated by DeepL.