JAN FRANS DE BOEVER – “LES LIANES”, CIRCA 1900
“LES LIANES”, CIRCA 1900
Oil on panel
Signed
29 x 17 cm.
De Boever started to paint at the same time as he started to read and write.
A true bohemian and a romantic aesthete he was an avid reader of Tolstoï, Baudelaire,
Huysmans and the Belgian symbolist authors. Sent by his father to a “maison close” to
initiate him to the pleasures of the flesh, he catches a venereal disease which will haunt him
for the rest of his life. He soon discovers the incarnation of evil which is secretly growing in
him and the fatal and diabolical signs of seduction. His work is impregnated with a desire of revenge,
violence and flagellation. In his perspective the woman is guilty of all evils. He sees her as a virgin
and a prostitute, an idol and a slut, blood thirsty, the Devil’s servant and sister of Death.