3. Louis Dubois
Brussels painter Louis Dubois is best known for his portraits and works depicting landscapes and animals. In 1868, together with Isidore Verheyden and Constantin Meunier, among others, he founded the Société Libre des Beaux-Arts, the first avant-garde society in Belgium. Being a realist, he defended the principles of his great French role model Gustave Courbet.
Dubois, like Berthe Art and Virginie de Sartorius, added characters, but he explored another tactic too. He also wanted objects to come to life. The difference is immediately clear when you look at his two works. Both works depict a brightly coloured vase. In one painting, it is complemented by books, a bright red seal and a woman arranging flowers. In the other he added artist's tools and a plaster cast of a woman's head covered by a mourning veil. One image is calm and homely. The other is emotional and unnerving. The mask seems to come alive, it takes on the otherness of a living thing.