Jacques Rosseels, Mariakerke

by Atelier Liesjes

On the horizon lies a small village: a church with a slender, slate-covered spire and a creamy-white tower, alongside which stand low houses with red roofs, hidden amongst the trees. In the foreground stretches a low-lying, damp meadow, with tufts of grass, reeds and a few wooden posts. The water of a wide ditch or pond takes up the lower half of the picture; in it lie three small rowing boats, one of which is moored near the bank where a woman in a reddish-brown dress is leaning forward. The sky is pearlescent in colour: soft pink, creamy white and a hint of lilac, with a single stray cloud. On the left, a narrow dyke leads off towards the village, with a few bare trees lining its edge. The meadows stretch all the way to the horizon and remain virtually empty. Rosseels paints this scene with a restrained, almost watercolour-like palette. There are no hard lines and no details that demand attention; everything is softness and distance. The composition is simple, with the water serving as a reflective surface and the church tower as the sole vertical accent. That tower is the sharpest element in an otherwise diffuse image, and thus the focal point of the scene. It is a realistic landscape painting with a neo-Romantic undertone, in which the end of the day and the tranquillity of the village are the subject. Jacques Rosseels (Antwerp 1828 – Antwerp 1912) was a Belgian landscape painter who worked extensively in the areas around Antwerp, Dendermonde and the Scheldt polders. He painted en plein air and preferred the early morning or late evening, when the light softens the forms. He chose his subjects close to home and painted them using a restrained, soft palette. His motifs remained simple: a village, a dyke, a ditch with three boats. A tranquil, gentle work for a classic interior.