Lot 467 D

The sea always held a great fascination for the Flemish painter and graphic artist Frans Masereel. The artist generally spent the summer months in Boulogne-sur-Mer, particularly from 1925 on, when he owned a fisherman's house in Equien. His house in this small, nearby village came to serve him as a personal retreat. Simple motifs, unadorned by figures and requisites, provided the primary theme for the works of 1929: images of beaches, fishermen and seascapes, whose simplicity sometimes invests them with a monumental effect. The forms of the present picture are articulated in a severe manner. As is typical for Masereel's oil painting, the image has something heavy, something melancholy about it, which is to be explained not only by the motif, but also by the dark greys set off by whitish accents. By adding black to the colours, suggestively three-dimensional volumes are modulated and occasional highlights are positioned. Masereel sensed at the time that he could utilise different expressive values when painting in oil than when working with the printmaking techniques that he had previously preferred. In 1929, his turn to oil painting was interpreted as a transformation or also as a process of self-realisation. G.F. Hartlaub, Director of the Städtische Kunsthalle Mannheim, organised the first comprehensive exhibition of Masereel's work in 1929.