From 1910 to 1913, Jean Colin continuously exhibited his works with Le Sillon, originally a conser- vative association of visual artists in Brussels. He was to remain one of its core exhibitors for a long time, or otherwise take part in their exhibitions on a regular basis, as did – among others – Fernand Toussaint 22 , Willem Paerels 23 and Ernest Godfrinon 24 . In order to explain Colin’s membership of Le Sillon, it is important to know that he did indeed join this collective during those years, a period in which the Sillonnists revised their initially conservative vision in a most remarkable way. 22 Fernand Toussaint (1873-1956), versatile Belgian painter, aquarellist, draughtsman and lithographer. In 1929 he won the gold medal for a woman’s portrait at the Paris Salon. Meanwhile, his elegant women’s portraits have enjoyed global renown, as a result of which he is now often regarded as the ‘Belgian Renoir’. 23 Willem Paerels (1878-1962), Dutch painter who took up Belgian nationality in 1930. After following the lesson(s) at the Brussels Académie for only one day, he was to develop further as an autodidact. He travelled a lot and worked alternately in the Netherlands, Belgium and France. He also belonged to the Belgian artistic trend of Brabant Fauvism and to the Sociéte belge des Peintres de la Mer [Belgian association of marine painters], founded in 1930. The latter movement grouped together painters who often depicted marine motives without exclusively being marine painters. Although he was influenced by several artistic trends, until his death Paerels saw himself first and foremost as an Impressionist. 24 Ernest Godfrinon (1878-1927), Belgian painter. During his lifetime, he mostly created landscapes, still lifes and intimate genre paintings. A number of his works can be regarded as postimpressionistic. At least two duo exhibitions of Ernest Godfrinon and Jean Colin were held during the 1920s. Le Sillon was founded in 1893, under the chairmanship of Gustave-Max Stevens 25 . The founders were mainly young students at the Brussels Académie, who drew in their subsequent members from the same breeding ground. The artists’ collective Le Sillon wanted to offer a counterbalance to neoimpressionism and symbolism, and later they were also opposed to luminism. Luminism was mainly a Belgian trend in painting, aiming at strong light effects. It emphasized these strong light effects through an optic mixture of colours and showed similarities to pointillism. This trend started in Belgium from 1904 onwards; it is also comparable with the neoimpressionism from France, practised for a short period by – among others – Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Georges Seurat (1859-1891) and Paul Signac (1863-1935). Emile Claus is regarded as the spiritual father of Belgian luminism. 25 Gustave-Max Stevens (1871-1946), Belgian painter of portraits, landscapes and still lifes. The founders of Le Sillon were reactionaries who refused to conform to any renewing –ism. For them, it was only craftsmanship that counted, the preservation of traditional methods. They wanted to refocus on the rich Flemish tradition of realism, which they regarded as the only ‘respectable’ form of painting, i.e. the classical ideal of beauty. Their aim was naturalism, with not only the 17th-century Spanish painter Velázquez 26 as their great example, but also other old masters like Rembrandt and Rubens. 26 Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) worked as a court painter for the Spanish royal family. He mainly created por- traits, religious scenes and genre paintings. His early work was characterized by exceptional realism. The first Sillonnists took refuge in art history’s past. They loved the sombre colours of earth and asphalt, were against the art of imagination, against the liberation of form and colour. It is true one had to recognise the artistic qualities in a number of them, but one should be allowed to reproach them for their dire lack of imagination, because ‘Art only begins where Imitation ends’, as Oscar Wilde once said. In fact, we may argue that the Sillonnists were initially opposed to – or were afraid of – modernism, because they did not want to deviate from their academic doctrine, perhaps under the conservative-bourgeois motto ‘innovation disturbs the market’. After all, they lived during a period of great change, where traditions in the arts were rejected in order to experiment with new ways. The ratio of colour to form was to determine the essence of the visual arts, and not the realistic imitation of scenery. The ‘stuffy’ art of the original Sillonnists was reviled by numerous art critics from different schools. By way of an example, here is a torrent of abuse by Lucien Solvay in the Belgian daily newspaper Le Soir, March 1902: ‘These young people are hopelessly old and the art they produce is museum art, old news, memories of the past, an unmistakeable step backwards. (…) It smells of the studio, the work is full of tricks, inventions, easy effects, coarse and brazen contrasts.’ Maybe partly prompted by the extraordinarily harsh criticisms, the Sillonnists tempered their reactionary extremism as of 1904, as they gradually rejuvenated their vision. They too, started to experiment and evolve, and ultimately made overtures towards luminism. In time, their brushstroke did become lighter and their realizations even began to bear resemblance to the first works by the future Brabant Fauve artists. In the early 20th century, Brabant Fauvism was a Belgian artistic trend, analogous to the Parisian Fauvism of – among others – Henri Matisse (1869-1954) en Raoul Dufy (1877-1953). The Brabant trend also employed vivid, almost unmixed colours, but in a less violent way than the French Fauves did. Rik Wouters – at present one of the favourites of the Belgian art public – is regarded as the principal Brabant Fauve artist. Although some Sillonnists made overtures towards Fauvism during that period, we cannot regard the Le Sillon society as forerunners of the Belgian Fauve school. The line of approach of the two movements differed too much for that. Nevertheless, a number of Brabant Fauves temporarily joined Le Sillon, if only to take part in the annual commercial exhibitions that took place in the Brussels Museum of Modern Art. Among others, Edgard Tytgat 27 and the unfortunate Rik Wouters 28 were part of this group of ‘opportunists’. Nevertheless, Wouters’ judgement of the Sil- lonnists was very harsh. In a letter to the French artist Simon Lévy29 dated 20 May 1911, he ridiculed them, reproached them for being crude followers of the great Ensor, after having taken part in the Le Sillon exhibitions himself: ‘The Sillonnists are all wielding their knives and want to see Ensor dead. They all seem to have discovered his secret. The palette knife gives fine, tonal effects and that says it all. In short, they’re all just bloody bricklayers!’ It was during this period, in which the Sillonnists began to evolve towards the trends they were initially formally against, that Jean Colin joined them. He, too, was not insensitive to dominant innovations. Le Sillon’s extremely conservative character faded and Impressionism and its deriva- tive trends were no longer controversial parts of artistic life, but had become generally accepted and established techniques, even to such an extent that the refreshing, late 19th-century Impressionism was now part of the curriculum at art academies, where the vision was downgraded to a clichéd technique. In 1905, Albert Baertsoen expressed it as follows in the art magazine L’Art Moderne: ‘It goes without saying that Impressionism is only a – surpassed – phase in art’s permanent evolution. One cannot deny its influence and importance. The whole of contemporary production is permeated by it.’ As his debut works show, Colin did indeed receive his impressionist baggage from the art academy, but, depending on the subject matter, he was to remain faithful to realism all his life. A realism, it is true, in his own style, with lighter or stronger impressionistic brushstrokes, the degree of which depended on his emotional involvement in relation to the subject to be depicted. Colin did not use influence or purpose as his system; his own emotions were his system. Not only did he use his eyes, but he also often painted from his heart. Colin was a blessed artist, who painted just like he drew breath. 27 The work of the Brussels painter Edgard Tytgat (1879-1957) is characterized by a personal style, inspired by expressionism and popular prints from the 18th and 19th centuries. His favourite subjects were circus life and the fun fair and its attractions. In addition, he also painted nudes and interiors. Tytgat was on friendly terms with Rik Wouters and joined the Brabant Fauvists who had gathered around the latter. 28 Rik Wouters died very young. During his short career, he painted almost continuously. In scarcely ten years, he realised a large oeuvre of about 200 paintings and more than 1,000 drawings. Wouters exhibited three times during the Le Sillon salons: in 1904, 1907 and 1909. 29 Simon Lévy (1886-1973), French painter, who left a limited oeuvre. In 1905 he travelled through Belgium and the Netherlands. After the death of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Lévy became acquainted with his work, which was to strongly influence his subsequent painting. We do not know when exactly Le Sillon ceased to exist, but the group’s last catalogue that we reco- vered is from 1924, an exhibition in which Jean Colin also participated. For all his extraordinarily successful artistic experiments – mainly carried out during the 1910s –, Colin continued to propagate the Sillonnists’ conservative ideas, applauded by art critics who were just as conservative. Colin did not condemn the modernists, but he regretted some of their excesses. As Édouard Fonteyne wrote in the art magazine Beauté in 1922: ‘Colin does not worry about fashion, snobbery and the idiocy of a few frenzied fellows who want to make them- selves heard at all costs, in the process of which they break off with everything life has left to offer us in the field of beauty, well-being and encouragement.’ In Savoir et Beauté of 1924, Gaston Heux expressed it as follows: ‘Colin regards with disfavour the disasters that art inflicts on nature.’ And in Le Soir illustré of 17 January 1931 we read the following witticism: ‘Colin is one of those who attribute to the métier a weight it has often lost with modern artists. This loss to the métier is always at the expense of the expressive powers – they impoverish and weaken. The contempt with which people look at the technique causes fewer strong personalities and more clever painters to emerge, with the latter replacing the arduous quest for character (which is exactly what the real challenge to the great masters was) with the easy virtuosity of the brush. Jean Colin has preserved this traditional aspect of the work.’ Beside Jean Colin’s membership of Le Sillon, we mention that he was a founding member of the Cercle d’Art d’Anderlecht [Anderlecht Art Circle] in 1905 and of the Cercle Artistique d’Auderghem [Auderghem Art Circle], which was founded in 1932. The latter society devoted itself to the establish- ment of a local museum, held exhibitions of its members’ works, published prints and supported municipal charities. From 1931 onwards, Colin was included in the list of added members of la Société Royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles [the Brussels Royal Society of Fine Arts]. Copyright © Marc Pairon: Impressionism :Hidden Masterpieces of Jean Colin