Léon Spilliaert,Woman at the Shoreline, 1910 — Léon Spilliaert,*Woman at the Shoreline,* 1910

‘I am no good at interpreting other people’s dreams; I have too many of my own.’
Leon Spilliaert

I recently visited a fine exhibition of the art of Leon Spilliaert (The Royal Academy, London - now closed but you can still go on a virtual tour).

Spilliaert was born in 1881 in Ostend on the Belgian coast. He grew up above the family perfume shop, a sickly, reclusive child obsessed with drawing. At 18 he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bruges, but, after just a few months, ill health forced him to abandon his studies. He worked as an illustrator for a Brussels publisher and spent some time in Paris. However, he soon returned to Ostend where he felt more at home.

‘My head seems to be sort of filled with mists.’

Spilliaert was frustrated by his lack of recognition. He suffered chronic stomach ache and insomnia. He endeavoured to cope by taking long twilit walks through the empty streets of Ostend. He wandered down gloomy Hofstraat, past the Royal Galleries, to the wide-beached seafront. He watched the fog rolling in over the deserted promenade; the clouds looming over lonely beach huts.

'The darker the night, the brighter the stars,
The deeper the grief, the closer is God!'
Fyodor Dostoevsky, 'Crime and Punishment’

Léon Spilliaert, Hofstraat, Ostend, 1908

In infinite shades of grey, with just the occasional dash of colour, Spilliaert created images of the solitary signal pole at the end of the pier, the desolate breakwater looking out onto the North Sea. In Indian ink, watercolour, pastel and charcoal, he painted the lighthouse in a storm; the Royal Palace Hotel haunting the far-off skyline. He depicted slender trees reaching for the nightsky, moonlight falling on the mountaintop, the cemetery at dusk.

'The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.'
John Milton, ‘Paradise Lost’

There’s a man hailing someone in the distance, a lady in a wide-brimmed hat with her back to us on the shoreline. There are young women paddling in the shallows; long robed women waiting - by the clock, by the window, on the jetty. A girl, caught in a gust of wind, holds on for dear life.

Spilliaert paints his bedroom - empty and unadorned. In his glass-roofed studio, amongst the pot plants, he studies his blue sketchbook; scrutinizes his drawing board. He examines himself in the mirror: smartly attired, but with dishevelled hair standing upright in an alarming quiff. There are dark rings around his eyes.

'Night is the other half of life, and the better half.’
Goethe

Léon Spilliaert, Self-portrait, 3 November, 1908.

Spilliaert was an artist of unease and melancholy, of solitude and silence. He recognised that the night is a time for reflection - when, liberated from the urgent bustle of the day, a settled peace descends, and the world looks and feels different; when profound truths reveal themselves. At night we stand on the threshold between rationality and fantasy, between dreams and reality. It is a time for invention and resolution.

'I love the silent hour of night,
For blissful dreams may then arise,
Revealing to my charmed sight
What may not bless my waking eyes.'
Anne Brontë, ‘Night’

We should all respect and value ‘the wee small hours of the morning.’ We should treasure their creative potential. At night the mind is free to explore untravelled paths, to make uncommon connections. We can come to terms with the problems that we can’t quite solve in the light.

'Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.'
Samuel Johnson

I confess I have for the most part been early to bed and a sound sleeper. I have been robustly conformist. Nonetheless, I have always kept a pen and paper by my bed, so that I can record the random thoughts and recollections that sometimes interrupt my slumber. In the morning I have discovered both lateral insights and meaningless drivel.

The difficulty is telling one from the other.

'Sunday is gloomy.
My hours are slumberless.
Dearest the shadows
I live with are numberless.'

The Associates, ‘Gloomy Sunday’ (Rezső Seress)

No. 273