James Ensor, Willem Paerels and Auguste Oleffe in an Antwerp Brothel after a Vernissage at Kunst van Heden 1913

Rik Wouters made this drawing, James Ensor, Willem Paerels and Auguste Oleffe in an Antwerp Brothel after a Vernissage at Kunst van Heden, with ink on paper. Just imagine Wouters, perched somewhere in the smoky haze of an Antwerp brothel, rapidly sketching. You can almost feel the frenetic energy of the moment, the clinking glasses, and the murmur of voices. Wouters must have been furiously trying to capture the essence of the scene before it dissolved into the night. It's a who's who of the Belgian art scene, all hanging out in this illicit location. Look at the bold, confident strokes of ink that dance across the page. They remind me of other painters like Manet and Toulouse-Lautrec, who were also drawn to the demimonde of their time. With just a few deft lines, Wouters evokes the atmosphere of the brothel, the figures emerging from the shadows, their faces etched with a mixture of boredom, amusement, and maybe a touch of melancholy. Artists are always talking to each other, aren't they? Reaching across time and space with their images. It’s this sense of camaraderie, this shared language of mark-making that I find so compelling.