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Masterpieces by James Ensor, Rik Wouters and Jules Schmalzigaug
This publication by Hannibal Books accompanies an exhibition from April 11 to August 30 at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA).
“The red that sings” is a phrase rooted in the intellectual atmosphere of the 19th-century when scientists first grappled with the concept of synaesthesia and poets and painters seized on it as a heightened response to the anxiety and excitement of breathless social change.
Jules Schmalzigaug baffled his critics during his tragically short life.
Now he is valued as one of the only Belgian artists to engage with the Italian futurist movement and its approach to colour, especially red, as the dynamic essence of change – or as he put it:
‘If you will indulge me […] I begin by assuming a light intensity = X […] in it I find the continuous play of the prism, i.e. that my light X decomposes and recom – poses constantly according to the calls of the colours. For example, a red, due to the fact that the molecular conglomerate “red” absorbs all the rays of light, except those vibrating in red, will have a degree of saturation, that is, of intensity, governed by X. Say I am walking in X; what is the result? A red has just addressed a call to my sight. Will I obey? Not at all – because – a yellow, a green, a blue will immediately have addressed similar calls to my eye.’
The result was dense, exhilarating forests of colour. They are on display as part of this engaging celebration of relatively modern Belgian artists, which draws a comparison with some of the old masters of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp’s collection that spans seven centuries.
Futurism was a moment, whose energy was sapped by World War I, which has been held responsible for Schmalzigaug’s suicide in 1917 when he was 34.
His almost exact Belgian contemporary Rik Wouters also died at the age of 34 after contracting eye cancer, which seems especially cruel for a colourist. His approach to the vibrancy of red, was not as a futurist, but as a fauvist. The two overlap in that colour was an expression of emotion rather than a direct depiction of life and nature, but Wouters feelingly portrays everyday scenes rather than abstractions.
Poignantly, in his “Self-Portrait with Black Eye Patch”, he is propped up against a red backdrop, variously interpreted as a comforting blanket of warm colour and as symbolising his life-blood ebbing away.
A piece in the socialist magazine Vlaamsche Arbeid reads: “what I heard once again in my memory, rising from the sunlit arena in Barcelona, was the deep, plaintive bellowing of a young bull which, bleeding and exhausted”.
James Ensor was born more than 20 years before Wouters and Schmalzigaug and died long after they did, at age of 89, giving him time to become Belgium’s “pivotal figure in the emergence of modernism,” as far as the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp is concerned, while Peter Paul Rubens is the “flag-bearer for the old masters”.
All are connected by their embrace of the colour red, which for Ensor was as much an aural experience as it was visual.
He called his harmonium “the painter’s instrument, and the rich, full tones, shrouded in mystery, evoke the grand, powerful tones of certain old paintings”.
“Certain old paintings” are included in “A Red that Sings”.
Rubens’ “The Holy Family with the Parrot” dresses Mary in the standard blue and also red, interpreted by art critics as evocation of the shedding of Christ’s blood that is to come.
It is presented alongside Ensor’s more radical “The Virgin with Masked Donors” in which the scarlet of Mary’s dress echoes the bright red grimacing lips of the masked donors.
Ensor also makes nerve-jangling use of red in his cacophonous “The Entry of Christ into Brussels”, which tellingly includes an harmonium, crammed in among the chaos of detail and the jostling hypocritical crowd.
Its impact is that of an assault on all our senses.
A Red that Sings
Masterpieces by James Ensor, Rik Wouters and Jules Schmalzigaug
This publication by Hannibal Books accompanies an exhibition from April 11 to August 30 at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA).
“The red that sings” is a phrase rooted in the intellectual atmosphere of the 19th-century when scientists first grappled with the concept of synaesthesia and poets and painters seized on it as a heightened response to the anxiety and excitement of breathless social change.
Jules Schmalzigaug baffled his critics during his tragically short life.
Now he is valued as one of the only Belgian artists to engage with the Italian futurist movement and its approach to colour, especially red, as the dynamic essence of change – or as he put it:
‘If you will indulge me […] I begin by assuming a light intensity = X […] in it I find the continuous play of the prism, i.e. that my light X decomposes and recom – poses constantly according to the calls of the colours. For example, a red, due to the fact that the molecular conglomerate “red” absorbs all the rays of light, except those vibrating in red, will have a degree of saturation, that is, of intensity, governed by X. Say I am walking in X; what is the result? A red has just addressed a call to my sight. Will I obey? Not at all – because – a yellow, a green, a blue will immediately have addressed similar calls to my eye.’
The result was dense, exhilarating forests of colour. They are on display as part of this engaging celebration of relatively modern Belgian artists, which draws a comparison with some of the old masters of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp’s collection that spans seven centuries.
Futurism was a moment, whose energy was sapped by World War I, which has been held responsible for Schmalzigaug’s suicide in 1917 when he was 34.
His almost exact Belgian contemporary Rik Wouters also died at the age of 34 after contracting eye cancer, which seems especially cruel for a colourist. His approach to the vibrancy of red, was not as a futurist, but as a fauvist. The two overlap in that colour was an expression of emotion rather than a direct depiction of life and nature, but Wouters feelingly portrays everyday scenes rather than abstractions.
Poignantly, in his “Self-Portrait with Black Eye Patch”, he is propped up against a red backdrop, variously interpreted as a comforting blanket of warm colour and as symbolising his life-blood ebbing away.
A piece in the socialist magazine Vlaamsche Arbeid reads: “what I heard once again in my memory, rising from the sunlit arena in Barcelona, was the deep, plaintive bellowing of a young bull which, bleeding and exhausted”.
James Ensor was born more than 20 years before Wouters and Schmalzigaug and died long after they did, at age of 89, giving him time to become Belgium’s “pivotal figure in the emergence of modernism,” as far as the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp is concerned, while Peter Paul Rubens is the “flag-bearer for the old masters”.
All are connected by their embrace of the colour red, which for Ensor was as much an aural experience as it was visual.
He called his harmonium “the painter’s instrument, and the rich, full tones, shrouded in mystery, evoke the grand, powerful tones of certain old paintings”.
“Certain old paintings” are included in “A Red that Sings”.
Rubens’ “The Holy Family with the Parrot” dresses Mary in the standard blue and also red, interpreted by art critics as evocation of the shedding of Christ’s blood that is to come.
It is presented alongside Ensor’s more radical “The Virgin with Masked Donors” in which the scarlet of Mary’s dress echoes the bright red grimacing lips of the masked donors.
Ensor also makes nerve-jangling use of red in his cacophonous “The Entry of Christ into Brussels”, which tellingly includes an harmonium, crammed in among the chaos of detail and the jostling hypocritical crowd.
Its impact is that of an assault on all our senses.
Barbara Lewis © 2026.
By Barbara Lewis • added recently on London Grip, art, books, exhibitions, painting • Tags: art, Barbara Lewis, books, exhibitions, painting