Henri Leys – A Walk Outside the City Walls, 1854

by Atelier Liesjes

Outside Antwerp’s city walls, it is almost evening. Long rows of pollarded trees stretch across a sandy plain; their bare branches stand out against a sky that is still golden-yellow at the bottom and already dark at the top. Scattered across the grounds, groups of people in sixteenth-century clothing are walking about: a lady in a light gown with a black bodice and a white bonnet, a gentleman in a brown cloak with a red hat who seems to be trying to say something to her, a group sitting on the ground resting, children playing amongst the trees, a soldier with a pike. Behind them runs the city wall with its round towers; above it loom the roofs, church towers and spires of Antwerp. Leys is not painting an anecdote, but a mood. The trees act as wings, the figures as actors on a stage, and the city in the distance as the backdrop. It is a landscape that is simultaneously a historical piece: an imagined, idealised past in which the city basks in its own glory. This combination of precise, somewhat dry brushwork and theatrical composition is typical of his historicism. The colours are dark and warm: brown, olive green, grey, with the occasional glow of gold and a hint of red. The light comes from beyond the horizon and sets the edges of the clouds ablaze. The style is romantic and historicising, akin to nineteenth-century Flemish landscape painting. The theme is twilight, the end of the day and the transience of all splendour; the feeling the work evokes is one of melancholy and tranquillity.
Hendrik (Henri) Leys (Antwerp 1815 – 1869) was a Belgian history painter, printmaker and chronicler of the Flemish past. He became famous for his scenes from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and influenced generations of Antwerp painters.
An atmospheric evening landscape with a touch of history: ideal for a warm, cosy interior.