Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium

This temporary exhibition, accessible with a ticket to the Fin-de-Siècle Museum, will highlight the work on paper of the Belgian artist Henri Evenepoel (Nice, 1872- Paris, 1899) throughout several themes. Thanks to his talent for drawing, a skill that he had already discovered as a child and that almost became an obsession, and despite his premature death at the age of 27, Henri Evenepoel left behind a considerable body of drawings. While Paris was preparing for the 1900 World Fair, the young Henri traversed the city on a daily basis carrying a sketchbook in his pocket. He seems to have recorded everything he saw. This resulted in thousands of works, from quick sketches to more elaborate drawings. Silhouettes of passers-by, city scenes, portraits of unsuspecting family members, nothing escaped his watchful eye.

The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium hold 16 paintings, over thirty drawings, a sketchbook and some prints to which hundreds of letters from the artist to his father as well as 877 negatives of his photographs were added to the collection in 1970. On the occasion of this temporary exhibition, a part of these photographs - after a digitisation of the negatives carried out by the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage, within the framework of the DIGIT PROGRAMME for the digitisation of the scientific and cultural heritage of the FSI and the Royal Belgian Film Archive (Cinematek), financed by the Federal Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO) - is now printed in its original state.

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Henri EVENEPOEL. Memories on paper

ABOUT THE ROTATION OF ARTWORKS

The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium possesses a rich collection of works on paper, which mainly consists of drawings, pastels and watercolors from the years 1868-1914. Our structural partner institutions, the print room and the music department of the KBR, the collection of 20th-century art from the RMAH and the archives of la Monnaie, also have a rich and specific collection that is complementary to ours. All these collections demonstrate the importance of the techniques on paper during this period. Because of their sensitivity to light, these works cannot be permanently shown to the public. That is why these works are shown in specific parts of the exhibition route, each time on a specific theme, and the set-up is replaced every six months, in accordance with the strict protection guidelines.

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