Painter Of Mystery

In the midwinter here is another reason to look forward to spring.  A collaboration between two museums is preparing an exhibition on the under-celebrated Belgian painter William Degouve de Nuncques (1867-1935).   Portions of several of the artist's notebooks will be included in the exhibition catalog, revealing his thoughts about his work and his sources of inspiration.

 Degouve de Nuncques defies attempts at  pigeonholing, even among Symbolists  His Pink House (1892) is often suggested as the progenitor  of surrealism and, close to home, of Rene Magritte's inverted twilight world.  A melancholy disposition and a deep pessimism underlined by personal tragedies - the death of his wife, a paralysis of his hand - appear in his paintings as a scrim that separates us from his images.  We look at them and wonder what the artist inscribed there.

It is not obvious what makes the painting Mysterious Garden fit its title but it suggests the artist's puzzlement, perhaps something like this:   " A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about.." (F. Scott  Fitzgerald, .The Great Gatsby, chapter  8 - 1925) 

Two years spent on the Balearic Islands off the Mediterranean coast of Spain from 1900-1902, seemed to intensify the artist's attraction to scenes of winter. What remained consistent was the usual lack of figures, the odd black swan or fair wagon, aside.

In recent decades,  Degouve de Nuncque's paintings have been included in group exhibitions such as Autour de Levy-Dhurmer at the Grand Palaid in Paris (1973), Mystery and Glitter at the Musee d'Orsay (2008) and The Kiss of the Sphinx at Vienna Kunstforum (also 2008).  Only now is a catalogue raisonne of the artist's work in preparation.

Images:
1. Birds In Winter, no date, Frank Welkenhuysen Galerie, Utrecht. 
2. The Black Swan, 1895, Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterloo. 
3. Mysterious Garden, 1891, private collection, Belgium.
3.untitled winter scene, Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterloo.
4. The Fair Wagon, 1910, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp.
5. Apple Trees in Bloom, 1908, private collection, Belgium.
6.. Snowy Landscape With Barge, 1911, Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterloo.

For further reading: Nocturnal World - William Degouve de Nuncques, posted here 16 November 2009
William Degouve de Nuncques: Maitre de mystere at Musee Felicien Rops in Namur, Belgium from 28 January 2012 to 6 May 2012 and at Kroller-Muller Museum in Otterloo, Netherlands from 27 May to 2 September.