Starry Night Victor Rousseau

Victor Rousseau was a student of Charles van der Stappen at the art academy in Brussels, where, like his teacher, he too became a professor, and eventually the academy’s director. Besides being an artist, he was a poet and music lover, and his excellent sense of rhythm and yearning for harmony are likewise perceptible
in his sculptures. Rousseau combined the classical erudition acquired during his time in Rome with the lyrical, enigmatic world view of the turn of the century. In the late nineteenth century, he was closely aligned with the Belgian symbolists, while the spirit of the symbolist movement also characterised his work in the twentieth century.
Rousseau often based his compositions on the juxtaposition of a naked and a clothed figure, highlighting the formal contrasts between the two. The subjects of this contemplative work from 1921, reminiscent of the muses or other allegorical figures, gaze in wonder at the spectacle of the star-filled night sky – the sculptor leaves to the viewer’s imagination the appearance of the heavens. The Museum of Fine Arts purchased the work at the exhibition Belgian Art: Past and Present, in 1927 in the Budapest Műcsarnok (Kunsthalle).

Zsófia Kovács