All of a sudden, the world has turned a gleaming yellow –
yellow trees, yellow leaves slowly twirling in the air, then smoothly settling
on the black asphalt.
In the dark too,
yellow rules: yellow lamp light in the
streets, yellow lit windows – even speed turns yellow with car lights tracing yellow
trails as glowing trams rumble
by.
It’s my best season as a Flâneur – roaming about invisibly
at dusk, hands in pockets, face half hidden in a scarf (now that temperatures have
at last come down).
Autumn is an eminently urban season, too – with the city in
its highest gear – exhibition, concerts, auctions, …
I have only recently discovered these Brussels auction
houses – with their endearingly varied mixture of artefacts on display – from
signature handbags, over diamond rings, to rugs, statues and paintings.
The audience at the public viewings is quite
mixed, too: both accidental passers-by and regular visitors, old and young, dressed
up and dressed down people, … There are professionals carefully appraising the
works on display, passionate amateurs & discreet connoisseurs and couples just
looking for a bargain to furnish their living room.
The art is usually of wildly diverging quality, effortlessly straddling periods and
schools (French, Dutch, Flemish or Belgian and a rare ‘in Italian manner’) - featuring
anonymous followers, minor masters, largely forgotten names ….
On this grey & yellow autumn Sunday with its drizzling rain,
I’m not the only one seeking distraction (and perhaps sudden beauty) at the
pre-auction public viewing – umbrellas have
amassed in the portal, all visitors looking eminently autumnal, with trench
coats and scarves.
As always, I’m drawn to the land- and cityscapes
of all ages.
Suddenly my
attention is caught by a luminous painting recalling for the briefest of
moments a Claude Lorrain. Looking closer (but still graciously ignoring both the slightly kitschy
romance and the awkward perspective) I see a vaguely familiar basilica, glowing
almost miraculously in an autumnal country side.
The catalogue tells it’s by a certain Ferdinand Marinus
(1808-1890). Later I will learn he spent his life assiduously painting local
Belgian landscapes, in this case the basilica of Saint Hubert. Browsing the web I'm also delighted to find there is
such a thing as a regional publication called "entre la Meuse et l'Ardenne" which back in 1990 dedicated a full article to our
Ferdinand Marinus.
The next aesthetic hit is in a corner of the auction room :
a series of darkly contrasted engravings of a city at night. I spend a long time looking at these black & white ”soft ground etchings” of windows at night (“gravures au vernis mou”). The soft waxy gleam of this technique so eminently suited to capture the mysterious nocturnal allure of lit windows.
The series is aptly called “Les fenêtres Le soir” – dated 1937, and dedicated to “my friend xxx”. They are by Jeanne Oosting , a Dutch woman artist who had a long life (1898- 1994) and who spent 11 years in Paris, until the approaching war made her return to Holland.
And on this banal Sunday in Brussels, at a second-rate auction
house, I revel in the strange resilience (throughout the vicissitudes of
history, across very different lives) of an ephemeral nocturnal impression, of a
fleeting sense of light.
