Léon Spilliaert

Madeleine Spilliaert, Bruxelles
Thence by descent

Executed on cream wove thin card, not laid down. The card has yellowed with age and oxidation spots are visible on the reverse along with some handling smudges and media marks. The upper and left edges are uneven with some associated minor scuffing and there is a tiny nick to the right edge, below the centre. There are some scattered small paintlosses around the extreme edges and two tiny pinhole losses in the background with some traces of old glue. Otherwise this work is in good original condition.
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LÉON SPILLIAERT

Léon Spilliaert is today internationally recognised as one of the most talented and original artists of his generation, since the important retrospective recently devoted to his work at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium in 2006, and the exhibition of his extraordinary self-portraits at the Musée d’Orsay in 2007.

Sotheby’s is privileged to present this remarkable group of three works of art by Léon Spilliaert from the personal collection of Mrs. Madeleine Spilliaert, daughter of the artist and devoted advocate of her father’s work. It is the first time these works have been presented on the art market.

This group comprises of Portrait de femme de profil au croissant de lune, Autoportrait (1929) and a vanity (Vanitas, 1917). Comparison between the last two works is particularly interesting because of the artist’s existential preoccupations which are here embodied in a surprising and fascinating manner.  

Lot 7

More than any other work of art expressing the sorrow of a young artist searching for himself, Léon Spilliaert’s self-portraits are at the heart of his youthful output and can be considered as paradigms of the kind. Analyses of the inner self, exploring the psychic tensions of a conscience obsessed by solitude and emptiness, burning with a strange fever, Spilliaert’s self-portraits are also vibrant professions of artistic faith, and directly relate to self-portraits by Van Gogh, Arnold Böcklin and Edvard Munch.

As early as 1902, the artist showed his interest in the confrontation with his own image  in Autoportrait. The theme reappears at different key moments of his artistic and human evolution, where he intensely explores, in a spiritual and psychological quest, the truth of his deepest inner self.

This mid-length self-portrait is set against a monochromic background, without any decoration to distract the viewer’s eye. It is more intimate, a far cry from the theatricality of many of Spilliaert’s dramatic self-portraits, but just as grim. The artist forces us to look into his gaze in a very raw manner. It is a bare interrogation, more direct, that Sigmund Freud qualified as “disturbing strangeness”. The artist does not create a stage, by the multiplication of his image, Spilliaert doesn’t question death, but his own existence, just like Musset did in the extract from La Nuit de décembre (1835).

The self-portrait theme is the strongest and most enchanting expression of Spilliaert’s work. As of today, there are only approximately thirty recorded self-portraits, most of them created between 1903 and 1915. These self-portraits evolve from the simple physical description to the contemplative confrontation of their creator with himself, with death.

Who are you, bleak and pale face,

Dark portrait dressed in black?

What do you want with me, sad bird of passage?

Is it a vain dream? Is it my own image

That I see in this mirror?

Alfred de Musset, La Nuit de décembre, 1835 (extrait)