La stiratrice

In 1912 Rik Wouters had just come back to Belgium from Paris, dazzled by what he had seen there, the pure colours of Matisse and Cézanne. You can feel it here in the bright pinks and blues laid down almost unmixed, straight and quick. The woman bending over the ironing board is his wife, Hélène, whom everyone called Nel. She was his favourite model and turns up again and again across his short career. There is nothing grand in the scene, an ordinary morning and a blue garment under the iron, yet she glances up from the work with an easy, contented look. Wouters trained first as a sculptor, and you can sense it in the solid, rounded way her arms and shoulders take the light.