Day in Winter

In Belgium in the 1880s and 1890s, many painters were chasing bright open-air light, the kind of luminous riverside work Emile Claus made popular. Xavier Mellery went the quieter way. He is remembered for dim interiors and empty stairwells drawn in silvery greys, and winter suited that temperament, since it drains the world of colour and leaves a low, hushed light. This oil is simply a day in winter. The museum in Otterlo holds it without a date, which fits Mellery, who rarely explained his scenes and trusted mood over plain description. He worked at the first stirrings of Belgian Symbolism, where suggestion mattered more than detail. The painting hangs today in the Kröller-Müller Museum, assembled by Helene Kröller-Müller, one of the first women to build a great collection of modern art.