Par un matin d’hiver (d’après Cornelis van Dalem)

2025

Egg tempera and oil on canvas

240 x 180 cm

The foreground is cast in shadow. In an abandoned barn, four figures sit on the left; a fifth approaches two of them, carrying a bowl of food. They appear as dark silhouettes against a bright outdoor background, framed by the wooden structure that shelters them. In the distance, a modest farmhouse glows with a dim light. A door is slightly ajar, and someone is handing something to a ragged figure—likely an act of charity toward a wandering beggar. Wikipedia informs me that the author of this small mid-16th-century scene, Cornelis van Dalem, was an aristocratic merchant who did not need to earn a living from his art. He therefore painted very little and chose his subjects carefully. It is interesting to note that he depicted poverty not from a spectacular point of view (no ugly drunkards fighting), but with empathy and dignity.

At the same time, the scene reminds me of a cinematic projection. The bright outdoors is made up of three uneven planes that open onto another layer of reality, while the figures in the foreground are positioned like spectators. It makes me think of some of my own works in which I explore the ambivalence between interior and exterior in situations that evoke film screenings. I take the structure of the painting and enlarge it to a scale that allows viewers to physically enter the pictorial space. The silhouettes now face a brightly lit exterior catapulted into our present—a projection from five hundred years later. In this encounter, the past and the present both refer to the constancy of human existence and social inequality.

(Tim Eitel)

Photo Jean-Louis Losi