Autumn Greyness & City Colours

 

November has at last turned chilly & grey (for a few days at least). So instead of lounging at sidewalk cafés, reluctantly basking in unseasonably warm sunrays (1),  a flâneur can now again take to the streets for long brisk walks. 

For lack of golden sunlight and in the absence of autumnal luminosities, I point the camera to whatever artificial colour that strikes the eye : red street marks echoed in red graffiti, two intensely blue flaps of a sagging shop awning.

Or the flashy colourful letters on a ground floor window (not of a shop, rather a room possibly used for creative purposes) - speaking directly to the soul of a keenly observing, city-gold-digging  flâneur.

1.         How many years, before we’ll stop calling 25°C  end of October “unseasonably warm” -  how long before the veterans of harsh autumns past have become a minority?   

Autumn Luminosities

 

Always a car driving in or out the frame.  Always the autumnal slanting sunrays, reflecting as always on wet asphalt.  And always the leaves, the yellow autumn leaves. 

the strange resilience of a fleeting sense of light

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. 

Here is November again!

Here is November again! November, with its lashing rains, its blazing yellows, its startling sunrays, its foggy forgiveness.




The dark & the rain now again envelope my morning & evening commutes – so I can walk invisibly , with cap turned on, looking up at lighted windows, wondering at the lives being lived there.

Now I can again gaze out of autumnal windows, at home, or traveling, peering through rain drops, watching the changing skies, the violently shaking trees.

And the autumnal park, how it is so yellow, how the wet tree barks are so shiningly black, and the yellow leaves so luminous. How a sudden sunray can set ablaze a wet wooden bench.