Antoon van Welie (1866-1956)

Echo, 1908

Charcoal, black chalk and gouache on paper 735 by 505 mm. Signed & dated 'Antoon van Welie ft 1908-'

Provenance Studio 2000, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1992 Private collection, The Netherlands Christie’s, Amsterdam, 13-14 May 2014, lot 230 Mathieu Néouze, Paris

Exhibited The Hague, Boussod Valadon & Cie, Tentoonstelling van schilderijen en tekeningen door Antoon van Welie, April 19081

Literature Studio 2000 Magazine, September 1992, no. 3, pp. 18-19, ill.2

Note Johannes Antonius (Antoon) van Welie was born in the small town of Afferden in Gelderland in the Netherlands on December 18, 1866. He studied art in Belgium and received critical acclaim in Paris early on. He lived between Paris, London and Rome, where he had a studio in Vatican City and received Papal commissions. Early on a protagonist of the international Symbolist movement, Van Welie became the most celebrated Dutch portraitist, whose portraits were in demand amongst high society and celebrities throughout Europe such as Sarah Bernhardt and Isadora Duncan3. He exhibited at the galleries of Bernheim Jeune and George Petit, while amassing a substantial collection of old master paintings.4 Eventually, Van Welie settled in The Hague where he remained until his death on September 24th, 1956.

1 Boussod, Valadon & Cie was a branch of the French gallery Goupil & Co., with offices in Paris, London, Berlin, New York and The Hague. 2 With dimensions 68 x 45 cm. 3 P. Roelofs & K. van Lieverloo, Antoon van Welie. De laatste decadente schilder 1866-1956, Zwolle/Nijmegen 2007, p. 8 & 34. 4 Sale Collection Antoon van Welie, 7 April 1936, Amsterdam, Mak van Waay, with over 150 old masters.

Van Welie’s symbolist style is unusual in Holland were the general taste is still focused on the traditional painters from The Hague school. Van Welie’s interest in mythology and fairy tales however, reveals more common interests with artists such as Fernand Khnopff, Franz von Stuck and his countryman Jan Toorop.

Love and ill-fated yearning became Van Welies subject matter, inspired by wide ranging sources from Wagner’s tragic opera Tristan and Isolde to Shakespeare’s heroin Ophelia; any contemporary play or poem could become a source. The present Echo derives from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The talkative nymph Echo was much admired by Venus for her magnificent voice. After misleading Juno into believing that her husband Jupiter is in town, Juno curses Echo by making her able to only finish a sentence, but not to start one; hence unable to say anything on her own.

The moment depicted is after Echo has fallen in love with Narcissus, who rejected her. Echo prays silently to Venus, who makes her disappear until she remains a voice and is heard by all, the aural phenomenon we know today as echo. Narcissus, deeply infatuated with his own reflection in the water, wastes away with love for himself, echoing the manner in which Echo did earlier. After his body has fully disappeared, the flower that bears his name sprung up in its place.

CHECK BOUSSOD archive RKD (Ramses van Bragt)