{"id":18796,"date":"2018-07-26T01:10:40","date_gmt":"2018-07-26T00:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=18796"},"modified":"2018-07-26T01:10:40","modified_gmt":"2018-07-26T00:10:40","slug":"the-art-of-antoon-van-welie-1866-1956","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2018\/07\/26\/the-art-of-antoon-van-welie-1866-1956\/","title":{"rendered":"The art of Antoon van Welie, 1866\u20131956"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"vanwelie1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Artists’ Studio (1906).<\/em><\/p>\n

This week’s post is another by Sander Bink about a neglected artist of the Dutch fin de si\u00e8cle<\/em>. There’s no need for me to add a great deal to Sander’s appraisal below other than to point out the evident debt that Antoon Van Welie seems to owe to the Pre-Raphaelites for whom Ophelia was a popular subject. British artists of the 19th century have often been criticised for adding little to the evolution of Continental art but the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites and the Arts and Crafts movement pervades European Symbolism. My thanks again to Sander for the post.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Antoon van Welie<\/a> (Dutch Wikipedia only) was a Dutch painter known mainly for his portraits of the rich and famous. Around 1900 his work was praised by writers and critics such as Camille Mauclair, Jean Lorrain and Anatole France. He had studios in The Hague, London, Paris and The Vatican. There\u2019s not much information about him in English, and for a long time there wasn’t a great deal in Dutch either, since during his lifetime he was already more or less forgotten. His being openly gay could have been one of the reasons. Male beauty is one of his subjects, as illustrated by The Artists’ Studio<\/em>. His preference for depicting Catholic priests and flamboyant society ladies might also have been a little too extravagant for Dutch artistic standards of the period. The influence of Symbolism and mysticism on his work sets him a little apart from the crowd as well. All this does make him somewhat of a “decadent” or fin de si\u00e8cle<\/em> artist. What surely did not help his posthumous fame was a portrait of Mussolini he painted in 1921, and apparently he later also made one of Hitler. But in 2003 he was rescued from art-historical oblivion by the good people of the Louis Couperus Museum in The Hague. An exhibition there was followed in 2007 by a larger one at Museum Het Valkhoff in Nijmegen: The Last Decadent Painter<\/em><\/a>. The book published for the occasion gives an extensive overview of Van Welie’s life and oeuvre but is unfortunately only available in Dutch.<\/p>\n

The portraits which made him famous in his day are, in my opinion, technically not that great and sometimes tend toward kitsch. More subtle and beautiful are his early Symbolist works which, like those by Simon Moulijn<\/a>, are strongly influenced by Maeterlinck\u2019s neo-mystical writings.<\/p>\n

\"vanwelie2.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Aglavaine en S\u00e9lysette (1899).<\/em><\/p>\n

Some quite refined examples are the lithograph Aglavaine en S\u00e9lysette<\/em> and the pastel Les Princesses de L\u00e9gende<\/em>, both directly inspired by Maeterlinck\u2019s plays.<\/p>\n

\"vanwelie3.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Les Princesses de L\u00e9gende (1899).<\/em><\/p>\n

\"vanwelie4.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ophelia.<\/em><\/p>\n

Literature was an important influence, as it was for many other Symbolist painters, and Van Welie duly produced the pastel Ophelia<\/em> in 1898\u2013\u201999. The same goes for musical themes, an example of which is the serene pastel Holy Cecilia with Lyre<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"vanwelie5.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Holy Cecilia with Lyre (1899).<\/em><\/p>\n

\"vanwelie6.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

He also designed book covers like the one for Jean Lorrain\u2019s novel Ellen<\/em> from 1906.<\/p>\n

\"vanwelie7.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

La Douleur (1895).<\/em><\/p>\n

But his most attractive work and as far as I am concerned one of the finest works of 1890s Dutch art is the chalk drawing La Douleur. Although the title emphasizes the young lady\u2019s suffering, she also seems to be in a (sexual) ecstasy. A paradoxical beauty like Baudelaire\u2019s femmes damn\u00e9es<\/em>: “de terribles plaisirs et d\u2019affreuses douceurs”.<\/p>\n

Sander Bink<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The gay artists archive<\/a><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The art of Simon Moulijn, 1866\u20131948<\/a>
\n\u2022 Ren\u00e9 Gockinga revisited<\/a>
\n\u2022 Gockinga\u2019s Bacchanal and an unknown portrait of Fritz Klein<\/a>
\n\u2022 More from the Decadent Dutch<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Artists’ Studio (1906). This week’s post is another by Sander Bink about a neglected artist of the Dutch fin de si\u00e8cle. There’s no need for me to add a great deal to Sander’s appraisal below other than to point out the evident debt that Antoon Van Welie seems to owe to the Pre-Raphaelites for … Continue reading “The art of Antoon van Welie, 1866\u20131956”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,42,44,45],"tags":[738,9621,9622,136,157,3990,9623,3964,3961],"class_list":["post-18796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books","category-painting","category-symbolists","tag-anatole-france","tag-antoon-van-welie","tag-camille-mauclair","tag-fin-de-siecle","tag-jean-lorrain","tag-louis-couperus","tag-maurice-maeterlinck","tag-rene-gockinga","tag-sander-bink"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-4Ta","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18796\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}