WITH VERVE: THE ARABESQUE LINE

A RED THAT SINGS. Masterpieces by James Ensor, Rik Wouters and Jules Schmalzigaug

Ensor, Wouters and Schmalzigaug were not only great colourists, but gifted draughtsmen too. The style of their fineest drawings is marked by a sa certain suppleness. The three artists employ a free, fluid line. Scenes, figures or abstract compositions appear on the paper with verve, as if drawn entirely from the wrist. Ensor’s sketches after Delacroix, such as the lion hunt – although it might equally well have been after certain works of Rubens – are whirls of arabesques.

James Ensor. After Delacroix: Lion, 1885-86. Ink on paper.

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Schmalzigaug did the same for a cockerel in motion, dynamic figures, landscapes, abstractions and sketched portraits. And Wouters’s landscapes, piglets and fawns are conjured up with a few swift strokes of the pen.

Rik Wouters. Study of Trees. Indian ink and wash on paper.

Lines dance. The arabesque line was thus the principal motif in our Big three’s drawn oeuvre, further evidence of their status as modernist trendsetters in their own country. Since the fin-the-siècle, the arabesque hsf become an essential conduit for new impulses and movements, a fundamental component of (…)