Spilliaert’s parents were two very different people: his mother Léonie was strictly religious, reserved and rather authoritarian, while his father, Léonard-Hubert Spilliaert, was a jovial, liberal-minded perfumer with a hairdressing business.1 Young Léon and this somewhat eccentric, well-read man must have engaged in some lively conversations and debates.2In the autumn of 1900, he even took his son to the Paris World’s Fair, where he gifted him a box of pastels. A clear sign that he supported the budding young artist.
When Spilliaert wanted to explore Paris on his own in 1904, hoping to get a job with a publisher or printer, his parents supported him with a sum of money.3
Evidently, Spilliaert’s father had complete faith in him. For example, he once talked of a vision in which the German Emperor and his entourage came all the way to Ostend to see Léon’s workshop.4 Moreover, Léonard heard people say that his son was a ‘painter with a great future’.5 He apparently said that if his son had a special talent, he got it from his father.6 Léonard died unexpectedly in 1928, at the age of 77.
