Léon Spilliaert in het Musée d'Orsay
By Leïla Jarbouai, Chief Curator of graphic arts and paintings, Musée d’Orsay
French national public collections include four works on paper by Léon Spilliaert. The first to be added to the Musée d’Orsay collection was Clair de lune et lumières (Moonlight and Lights) (1908). Madeleine Spilliaert, the artist’s daughter donated this work when the museum was founded in 1981. The donation took place after the Spilliaert retrospective, celebrating what would have been the artist’s 100th birthday, at the Galeries nationales du Grand Palais.
In 2005, the Musée d’Orsay acquired l’Autoportrait aux masques (Self-portrait with Masks) (1903) from Galerie Derom, which had obtained it thanks to the artist’s descendants. This was followed, in 2011, by the purchase of Digue la nuit. Reflets de lumière (Dike at Night. Reflected Lights) (1908), from the gallery David Lévy et associés, and Les Dominos, in 2015, from the Nicolas Fayt gallery.
Self-portrait with Masks, a small-scale work in pencil and Indian ink, is kept in the graphic arts department of the Musée du Louvre, along with the Musée d’Orsay’s collection of drawings acquired before 2013. The three other, relatively large works, in mixed media with Indian ink, coloured pencil and pastels are stored framed in the Musée d’Orsay’s pastel depots. They are extremely sensitive to light, which means they are only displayed during temporary exhibitions. Self-portrait with Masks graced the cover of the catalogue of Des vies et des visages, portraits d’artistes au musée d’Orsay (Lives and Faces. Portraits of Artists in the Musée d’Orsay), an extra-muros exhibition at the Musées de la Cour d’Or in Metz. Léon Spilliaert, Lumière et Solitude (Léon Spilliaert, Light and Solitude), an exhibition jointly organised in 2020 by the Musée d’Orsay and the Royal Academy in London, exhibited these four works together.
