Henri Leys – An old façade on the Melkmarkt in Antwerp

by Atelier Liesjes

A narrow, tall façade fills almost the entire frame. It is an old building on Antwerp’s Melkmarkt, constructed from weathered timber: wide horizontal planks, a row of small stained-glass panes with leaded mullions, a wooden door with a handle, a few stone steps and a cellar hatch closed off by a grate. On the right, the façade slopes away at an angle, as if the house had lost its balance after centuries. Above the windows, an old signboard or a carved beam can be seen; at the bottom, a cobblestone pavement runs along the wall. Leys painted this little façade as a portrait. There is no street, no people, no sky – only the surface of the wood and the glass. The composition is almost abstract: horizontal bands of planks and window frames, interrupted by vertical posts and a single shadow. This austerity is characteristic of his later work, in which he sought to recapture the simplicity and dignity of the late medieval city.
The colour palette is extremely limited: brown, umber, grey-green, dull ochre and a single patch of light in the glass. The paint is applied thinly and dryly, with visible brushstrokes that mimic the grain of the wood. The style is that of Belgian historicism and Romanticism, but the approach is modern: Leys records; he does not idealise. The theme is old age, decay and the beauty of the ordinary, and the feeling the work evokes is one of silence and tranquillity – a house that has stood for centuries and has seen it all.
Hendrik (Henri) Leys (Antwerp 1815 – 1869) was a Belgian painter of history paintings, genre scenes and portraits, and one of the most highly regarded masters of the Antwerp School in the nineteenth century. His archaic style, inspired by the Flemish Primitives, exerted a great influence on contemporaries such as Alma-Tadema. An intimate, almost monochrome cityscape for lovers of Antwerp architecture, old façades and Belgian Romanticism.