Spilliaert had just got engaged and a new, optimistic phase was dawning in his life. But unfortunately, fate struck first. On 27 November 1916, his dear friend Emile Verhaeren died in a tragic train accident on the platform in Rouen. Spilliaert married Rachel Vergison a month later. The couple tried in vain to flee to neutral Switzerland to join the pacifists but got no further than Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, where they settled in Zwarte Vijverstraat, and moved to Begijnenstraat in May 1917. Spilliaert, the eternal flâneur, often went out for walks around neighbouring Karreveld. On 15 November 1917, their only child was born, a daughter they named Madeleine.
The end of the war ushered in a new happy phase. Domestic scenes exuding a certain sweetness emerged in his work. The recent friendship with architect Léon Sneyers led to a lot of graphic work and his first solo exhibition in Brussels, at Sneyers’ gallery on Boulevard de Waterloo. Spilliaert was once again inspired by Maeterlinck, creating ten lithographs after Serres chaudes (Hothouses). In early 1920 in Paris, he unexpectedly sold all the works he had with him to Louis Libaude (1869-1922), a collector of Picasso and Utrillo. Shortly after, Spilliaert was invited by curator Hippolyte Fierens-Gevaert to participate in the exhibition in the Belgian pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
Spilliaert predicted his big break on New Year's Day, 1921: ‘I sense my heyday approaching. It’s now or never.’1 On the subject of his recent works, he wrote: ‘These may well be my best yet.’2The year got off to a promising start: Spilliaert was taken on by Sélection, the newly founded gallery of Paul Gustave Van Hecke and André De Ridder. They collected artists such as Frits Van den Berghe, Gustave De Smet, Constant Permeke and James Ensor, and promoted what is known as Flemish Expressionism. They did so in the magazine Sélection too, which continued to exist for some ten years after the premature end of the gallery with the same name in 1922. During this period, Spilliaert also painted portraits of his close friends: Constant Permeke, Henri Vandeputte and Fernand Crommelynck.3 These he made while staying with his family in Ostend for several months, in Nieuwpoortsesteenweg 52. The couple P.G. Van Hecke and Norine De Schryver were immortalised in a double portrait by Spilliaert.
