8. Henri De Braekeleer
The painting Old Trinkets was created by Henri De Braekeleer, who grew up in a family of artists in Antwerp. His father, genre painter Ferdinand De Braekeleer, and his uncle, internationally renowned history painter Henri Leys, introduced him to the craft. His father and uncle relished public life, but Henri lived a reclusive existence. He thus developed his own kind of realism, inspired by Dutch masters such as Johannes Vermeer.
Henri De Braekeleer hardly painted at all between 1877 and 1883, perhaps as a result of a depression. When he picked up the brush once more, a few years before his death, he mainly painted still lifes with a freer, almost impressionistic touch. Throughout his oeuvre, he focused on the idiosyncratic existence of things. This also extended to his interiors, landscapes and portraits. This fascination gradually became an obsession and he lost sight of what is human.
Old Trinkets is an exquisite, extravagant still life. You can pick out china, glassware, books, luxurious fabrics, a fan. The sublime rendering of light and shadow, of details and texture is characteristic of his work. His paintings exude a sense of melancholy and timelessness, giving rise to questions about the transience and meaning of things.
Despite his limited oeuvre, De Braekeleer received a great deal of attention and appreciation from critics, collectors and artists. Ensor describes him as: "the great painter, refined and meticulous to the death". Along with Ensor and Wiertz, he is one of the protagonists of Belgian painting between 1830 and 1900.