Rik Wouters - Etalage van een Viswinkel

Only one other copy of this etching is known and was exhibited at the Schepenhuis museum in Mechelen, in 2013.

“A prominent figure in Brabant’s Fauvism, Rik Wouters brought us brilliant and colorful art, far from the dramas that marked his existence until his early death in 1916 at the age of 33. Rik Wouters equally mastered painting, sculpting and drawing: his extraordinary career has made him an essential representative of Modern Art in Belgium.” (Source Fine Arts Belgium – Rik Wouters: A Retrospective – 10/03/2017 – 02/07/2017)

Rik Wouters was not a full-blooded etcher, he drew by etching. About fifty works were created in this manner, between 1908 and 1911. The printing plates of a number of etchings that Rik made in those four years have not been preserved, so that the famous “Album Stols” (a 1927 edition of Wouters’ etchings and drypoint engravings, compiled at the request of his wife and muse Nel Duerinckx) only includes 35 works in total. Only one copy is known of a single etching, the Shop window of a fish Monger (photo). In other cases, only a limited number have survived, scattered among museums and private collectors.

Rik Wouters – Etalage van een Viswinkel