Jules Elslander
Artist / maker
Rik Wouters (sculptor)Date
(1912)Period
20th centuryCollection
Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp
Dignified gallery director After years of financial struggle, in 1912 the painter and sculptor Rik Wouters signed a lucrative contract with Galerie Giroux in Brussels, founded by the Frenchman Georges Giroux. In return for exclusivity, Wouters was paid a monthly salary – an unprecedented arrangement in Belgian art. The nonchalantlooking Jules (actually Jean-Francois) Elslander shown here played an important part…
Read more
Dignified gallery director
After years of financial struggle, in 1912 the painter and sculptor Rik Wouters signed a lucrative contract with Galerie Giroux in Brussels, founded by the Frenchman Georges Giroux. In return for exclusivity, Wouters was paid a monthly salary – an unprecedented arrangement in Belgian art. The nonchalantlooking Jules (actually Jean-Francois) Elslander shown here played an important part in the agreement, which probably also prompted the creation of this half-length portrait. Giroux’s wife Gabrielle received the same honour, in her case with a fulllength portrait.
Elslander (1865–1948) was a Francophone author who unleashed a scandal in Belgium and France in 1890 with his novel Rage charnelle [Carnal Frenzy], which included themes of incest and necrophilia. He published several more books before joining Giroux as a manager in 1912. Wouters and his sitter met by chance in 1910 on the balcony of the tram from Brussels to Boitsfort, where Wouters lived on the edge of the Foret de Soignes.
Rik Wouters trained as a sculptor at the Brussels Academy; he taught himself to paint. It did not take him long to achieve the monumentality in his sculpture that he also later aspired to in his painting. In this instance, he applies the sketchy character of his paintings, as it were, in the broad modelling of Elslander’s hair and clothes. It makes his distinguished appearance even more impressive.
Wouters modelled his sculptures in clay and then made a definitive version in plaster before having one or more bronzes cast. This one was made at the Fonderie Nationale des Bronzes, where the celebrated bronze-founder Jacques Petermann had worked since 1906. The KMSKA purchased one of the bronze versions in 1956 from Wouters’ widow, Helene Duerinckx, at the same time as the plaster matrix from a Mr Grimar.
Read less
