Longreads

The Spilliaert Collection at Mu.ZEE

Two Ostend museums, lots of acquisitions, several donors and a touch of mystery

By dr. Stefan Huygebaert, curator Mu.ZEE

Being an art museum located in Spilliaert’s home town of Ostend, Mu.ZEE has a privileged relationship with the artist and his work. Mu.ZEE was founded in 2010 under its current name through the merger of two Ostend museums: the Museum of Fine Arts of Ostend, established in 1893, and the PMMK (Provincial Museum of Modern Art), which, after previously been based in Bruges and Ypres, moved into the current museum building in Romestraat in 1986. The story of the collection’s expansion over the past 130 years is anything but straightforward. Moreover, the provenance of several pieces - befitting this mysterious artist - is shrouded in mystery.

PMMK

The PMMK was the younger of the two institutions and since its inception in 1957, the collection focused on young Flemish art from Flemish Expressionism onwards. In the late 1970s, the curator at the time, Willy Van den Bussche (1942-2013), explained his reasons for including works by Léon Spilliaert in the PMMK’s collection. He stated that even though Spilliaert’s ‘most important body of work was created before the First World War,’ the artist was considered a transitional figure between Symbolism, Pre-Expressionism and Surrealism.1 In 1966, the PMMK acquired six early works from Spilliaert’s widow, including Marine with Wake (1902) and Beach with Moon (1908) for a total of BEF 600,000.2

The Ostend Museum of Fine Arts

In 1897, the first curator of the Museum of Fine Arts, founded following a decision by the city council in October 1893, was Constant Permeke’s father Henri (1849-1912). The museum acquired several of Spilliaert’s works during the artist’s lifetime.

Unfortunately, on the night of 27 May 1940, the acquisition archives were lost in a wartime fire, which also destroyed the neighbouring house at 2 Kapellestraat. As a result, documentation detailing the acquisition of ten works by Spilliaert, which are part of today’s collection and mostly dated 1930 and 1931, as well as of the masterpiece Self-Portrait with Mirror from 1908, was lost.3 In all likelihood, these were works by Spilliaert already in the collection before 1940, but were not destroyed by the fire. Here you will find ten Spilliaert works with an inconclusive provenance originating from the Ostend Museum of Fine Arts :

A reconstruction of the expansion of the Spilliaert collection before 1940 may shed some light on the matter. An undated visitor guide, which can probably be dated to 1924, reveals that the museum had at least two watercolours by Spilliaert before the war: Beach (1905, 58 x 69 cm) and Fishermen’s Quarter (1914, 88 x 71 cm).4 In all likelihood these works were lost in the wartime fire along with works by Emile Spilliaert and Louise Héger, as well as by James Ensor, Fernand Khnopff and many others.5 We cannot be certain of when they were added to the collection. At that time, the ‘museum’ only existed in the form of a collection and used the rooms in the Town Hall on Wapenplein, the library, the Kursaal on the dyke and the Hospital as exhibition space.6 In March 1924, the newspaper Le Carillon, which was sympathetic to Spilliaert, called on the City of Ostend to purchase the artist’s work. The time was right, collectors were showing an interest and prices would inevitably rise.7 It is possible that Beach and Fishermen’s Quarter were acquired shortly thereafter, because seven months later Georges Paquot described the museum in Le Carillon and saw two works by Spilliaert in the Town Hall, a ‘fisherman’s house’ and an ‘evening view of the palisade.’8 It is unclear whether the latter work is in fact the previously mentioned Beach. Paquot may have been referring to Ostend Harbour. This large watercolour with gouache and pastels from 1910 is one of ten Spilliaert works with no provenance in the Mu.ZEE collection today. However, a truly evening-like atmosphere is not immediately noticeable.

In 1925, the City of Ostend purchased a work entitled La Lune de Miel (literally: Honey Moon or figuratively: Honeymoon) at the dual exhibition Spilliaert-Oscar Jespers in the Kursaal.9 It is unlikely that this is the 1905 work Beach, mentioned in the visitor’s guide and lost in 1940, since Spilliaert usually exhibited his recent work.10 During a Rotary visit in 1926, three unspecified works by Spilliaert were displayed in the Ostend library, which was located in the Town Hall.11
We can assume that these were Beach, Fishermen’s Quarter and Lune de Miel - unless it concerned other Spilliaert works in addition to those displayed in the museum section of the Town Hall. In 1929, Le Carillon reported that librarian-curator Carlos (Carlo) Loontiens (1892-1969) had donated ‘ten Spilliaert works’ from his own collection to the city, along with works by (Jan) De Clerck and (Maurice) Seghers.12 No further details are known about this donation. Arriving at the total number seems simple, as ten Spilliaert works also currently have an inconclusive provenance. However: five of those works of inconclusive provenance are dated 1930 and one 1931. Was the newspaper misinformed (was this perhaps a long-term loan?), or were these Spilliaert works owned by Loontiens also (partially) lost in May 1940? The local newspaper Le Littoral reported in late December 1930 on the purchase of ‘a large watercolor: the famous house called ‘Perkstoel’ (sic), which is also rather strange.13 The purchase was reportedly made at the suggestion of the alderman for fine arts, Georges Verhaeghe. Shortly before, the work was on display at the Vieille Ostende exhibition at Ms Storck-Hertoge’s Studio gallery.

This is odd, since the museum did not purchase a work with the title The house named ‘De Preekstoel’ (the pulpit) from a local art gallery until 2003. A few days after this first article in 1930, several newspapers reported that the city had purchased ‘paintings’/’oeuvres’ by Spilliaert, Gerbosch and Ensor for the museum at that exhibition, but only the first article specified the titles of the works (one for each artist).14 It may have been a different version or different view of the famous Ostend house, and another work that was lost in the war fire.

The acquisition of works by Spilliaert for the Museum of Fine Arts during the interwar period

• March 1922: Carlo Loontiens is appointed curator of the Museum of Fine Arts and the Museum of Local History
• 19 March 1924: Le Carillon calls on the city to buy Spilliaert’s work
• 2 December 1924: Georges Paquot mentiones a ‘une maison de pêcheur ostendais et une vue de l’estacade le soir’ (a ostend fisherman’s house and an evening view of the palisade) in the museum
• Circa 1924: a visitor’s guide mentions Spilliaert’s two watercolours Beach and Fishermen’s Quarter in the museum’s entrance hall
• September 1925: the city purchases Lune de Miel (Honey Moon) from Spilliaert
• October 1926: during a Rotary visit, three unspecified works by Spilliaert are displayed in the library
• April 1929: according to a report in Le Carillon, curator Loontiens donates ten Spilliaert works to the city
• December 1930: the city reportedly purchases (a version of) The House Named the Pulpit
• 27-28 May 1940: a wartime fire destroys the Town Hall and most of the works of art in the Museum of Fine Arts - curator Carlo Loontiens is removed from his post after the war

Up to fourteen of Spilliaert’s works may have disappeared since the fire in 1940. Fortunately, the documentation of post-war acquisitions is much better. Under the leadership of curator Frank Edebau, after Spilliaert’s death, the museum purchased twenty of the artist’s works from his widow between 1947 and 1972. In 1953, there was a major series of acquisitions, consisting of nine works, including the masterpieces The Gust, Self-Portrait with Red Pencil and White garments. In the 1970s, works were acquired from various dealers and collectors, culminating in Vertigo in 1975. In 1996, Madeleine Spilliaert donated the etching Self-portrait with double portrait of Emile Verhaeren and portrait of Edmond Deman. The work, like twenty previously acquired Spilliaert pieces, came directly from the estate comprising some 300 works Spilliaert had gifted to his wife and daughter. Earlier, in 1957, Spilliaert’s sister Rachel Schriewer-Spilliaert donated three works to the museum. The museum also purchased a work, Portrait of Andrew Carnegie, from Spilliaert’s friend Henri Vandeputte in 1952.

Thanks to the Vrienden van de Stedelijke Musea founded in 1990 and the successor, the Vrienden van Mu.ZEE, three graphic works, an illustrated publication, the drawing The port of Ostend, the watercolour Woman with Child Reading and the Portrait of Miss Simonne Kremer were added to the collection in 1994. Mrs Van Glabbeke, widow of Ostend mayor Adolphe Van Glabbeke (1904-1959), historian Patrick Vandenabeele (1959-2013), Mrs Fernanda Vermeir, the Vereniging tot Verrijking van het Belgisch Artistiek en Folkloristisch Kunstpatrimonium (Association for the Enrichment of the Belgian Artistic and Folkloric Art Heritage), the Public Library of Ostend (including a transfer of a large number of lithographs in 1989) and artist and art historian Xavier Tricot (°1955) complete the list of Spilliaert donors.

Mu.ZEE

Xavier Tricot donated Carafe on a Bedside Table to the City of Ostend in 2018, as part of a larger donation, when the collection was already managed under the name Mu.ZEE. Since 2020, Mu.ZEE has benefited from the long-term loan of an extraordinary, still-growing private collection of Spilliaert works, with representative pieces from both the earliest (Solitude, 1901) to the final period (Winter Trees, 1942), as well as the years in between. In 2024, Mu.ZEE acquired Dolls. The Marquis and the Tyrolean Girl from 1928, a ‘rare and vital’ (‘zeldzaam en onmisbaar’ in the words of the Topstukken Decreet) key work, as the first institution in Flanders, following the decree amendment of 10 March 2023, to be entrusted with a work of art resulting from an inheritance tax payment. That same year, as part of a series of fifteen works from an acquired private collection, the King Baudouin Foundation entrusted Mu.ZEE with a large watercolour by Spilliaert, Haystack.

The Mu.ZEE collection also contains a number of fascinating Spilliaert memorabilia, objects with a connection to Spilliaert’s life, such as an original perfume bottle of Fleurs des Flandres from the Spilliaert perfumerie, a New Year’s letter from young Spilliaert and a pastel box, presumably the one the artist received from his father when they were in Paris.

Graphic work

Lastly, Mu.ZEE has a very important and extensive collection of the artist’s graphic work. Although the first exhibition about Spilliaert’s graphic work was not organised until 1982, the Museum of Fine Arts already collected prints by Spilliaert in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. This collection was expanded considerably in the late 1980s, under curator Norbert Hostyn. Works include individual prints: two etchings and a dry point from Spilliaert’s ‘etching year’ 1908, and eleven individual lithographs from 1917-1919, the period when he concentrated on lithography.15 The Mu.ZEE collection also contains copies of all the albums or folders designed by Spilliaert, specifically the complete set of ten lithographs from the album Les Serres Chaudes (1917, ex. 3/20) after Maeterlinck, the album Plaisirs d’hiver (1918, 15 standard lithographs, 5 proofs, a title page and a cardboard cover, in addition to design drawings for five of the ten prints and the cover) and the portfolio Sites Brabancons (1919). In addition there are the illustrated collections of poems or books by Franz Hellens (La femme au prisme, 1920), Henri Vandeputte (Poëmes du Poëte, 1931), Benoît Bouché (Au temps que Nanette était perdue, 1931, including a copy containing all the unique watercolours and pen drawings), Paul Neuhuys (Inutilités. Poèmes, 1941) and Marcel Lecomte (La servante au miroir, 1941). Multiple copies of these publications were often acquired over the years, including through a transfer from Ostend City Library in 1991. The collection of La servante au miroir is noteworthy; eleven copies were purchased between 1997 and 2007, of which no less than five were bought from Herman Goossens in 2007. It was likely that the museum conservator wanted to be able to display several pages of the book at the same time. Lastly, Mu.ZEE has several illustrated magazines for which Spilliaert designed the cover or internal illustrations, notably Pourquoi Pas ? (August 1902), Haro ! (August 1913), La mascotte : Le Tout-Ostende (1921), Sélection (December 1925, January 1926) and Ostende et le littoral belge (1929).

Taking them all into account, this means that today, Mu.ZEE preserves and/or has on long-term loan a representative collection of 110 unique works (four of which are double-sided) from Spilliaert’s extensive oeuvre. The collection includes both early and late works in various media and several masterpieces and public favourites, four of which are on the Flemish Community’s list of masterpieces, complemented by a highly representative graphic collection of 3 ten-volume print series or albums, 20 individual prints, 25 illustrated books and 7 magazines. Moreover, this reference collection continues to evolve, as does the research into its origins and the works of art that make up the collection.