Circa 1914. A woman lingers in a lush garden. The sun strikes hard. Jean Van den Eeckhoudt seizes the moment: not a face, but an explosion of colour and light.
Colour as Light
The straw hat dominates the composition. Its cream circle, ringed with an intense green ribbon, radiates like a sun. Look: a pink dress meets a vivid red scarf. Mauve tree trunks carve up the space. The leaves, yellow and green, vibrate against a dense blue-violet ground. Van den Eeckhoudt does not imitate nature. He translates it into synthetic colour planes, laid down with a deliberately Fauvist freedom. The handling is broad, direct, almost brutal. And yet the whole breathes. The supple composition gives the work a deeply decorative character.
A Belgian in the Southern Sun
After 1910, Van den Eeckhoudt progressively abandoned the Divisionist brushstroke inherited from Neo-Impressionism. Colour alone became the bearer of light. This painting is its most vivid demonstration. His connections to avant-garde circles — notably through Simon Bussy, close to Henri Matisse — steered him toward Fauvism. The South revealed to this Belgian painter a palette he would never have found beneath the grey skies of Flanders. Ghent preserves this key work at the Museum of Fine Arts, a testament to a decisive artistic transition.
Jean Van den Eeckhoudt
Jean Van den Eeckhoudt (1875–1946) trained under his uncle Isidore Verheyden, a central figure of Belgian Luminism. Shaped by Impressionism and then Post-Impressionism, he evolved toward a personal Fauvism, nourished by his Mediterranean winters in Menton from 1904 onward.
A Question for You
💭 When colour erases the face and form is pared down to its essence, the painting tips: are we still in the realm of portraiture, or already at the threshold of abstraction?
About this work
- The Straw Hat
- Jean Van den Eeckhoudt
- c. 1914
- Oil on canvas
- 86.5 × 65.5 cm
- Museum of Fine Arts Ghent (MSK Gent), Inv. 1976-I
- https://www.mskgent.be/en/collection/1976-i
