12. Hubert Bellis
Nine paintings by Hubert Bellis: after Ensor, this artist is most highly represented in these rooms. Hubert Bellis excelled at the 19th-century still life. He was extremely productive, and in 1857 he set up a business housing an open studio with his brother Louis. Artists such as Louis Thevenet, Jean Brusselmans and Rik Wouters, who also feature in the exhibition, were very much at home there. The studio, called L'Effort, existed until World War I.
In the late 1870s, the Bellis brothers joined La Chrysalide, a Brussels artists' society that also counted Alfred Verhaeren, Guillaume Vogels and the young Ensor among its ranks. When the group disbanded in 1883, Ensor and Vogels co-founded Les XX. Some ten years later, Louis Bellis co-founded the Cercle Artistique d'Ostende with Ensor, but it lasted barely two years.
At first glance, Hubert Bellis' still lifes do not seem particularly ambitious. They are small, pleasing works depicting fruit, flowers or fish. But it is precisely this focus on just one or a few things that makes them incredibly powerful. A couple of shells, berries, a piece of meat demand your attention. Their naked appearance evokes a certain tension; they reveal the essence of the object itself. Bellis does not zoom out, but in. He omits any narrative, objects exist independently in their own little theatre. The severed fish head is powerful and poignant. Because a fish cannot close its eyes, it stares at you, probing, even when dead. Suddenly the still life is looking right back at you! Even a hunk of meat, alone in the dark, seems to appeal to you. The red chop positioned almost upright and a bright green cauliflower are remarkably surprising.