Belgian Hothouse Waffles

(above: The outcast, 1898. Minne)

George [Baron] Minne was born in Ghent in 1866, and though details of Minne early life and family are sketchy, as the title in his name indicates, he was probably from a well-off family; we do know that he attended the Jesuit College of Sainte-Barbe, as did Maeterlinck, and studied illustration and sculpture at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts (Ghent) from 1879 to 1886 where he studied with Jean Delvin. In 1884 Minne produced the sculpture Human Suffering, which is considered his first major work; by the title of the work one can deduce the brooding and despairing qualities of Minne works to follow, which are characterized by “expression of dejection, desperation, resignation, loss, self-protection, self-absorption, introversion, and anxiety.”(1)
The works of Minne are plagued by a deep-seated psychoses, in which he presents most of his figures in positions of vulnerability and introversion. His figures seem to close in on themselves and embrace their own bodies as to protect themselves from the menacing outside world: this self-absorption is characteristic of the Symbolist aesthetic. Art historian Lynne Pudles classifies Minne works into three interrelated types of imagery:

The first consists of isolated figures, absorbed in contemplation, inner vision, melancholy, or pain. [...] The Second class consists of single figures clutching a second figure–such as a dead child, a deer, or a wayward son– whose autonomy is minimized, so that it appears only as a desperately clutched object, a possession, or an intimate extension of the first figure. A third class suggests the replication of the self: a single figure is accompanied by a duplicate or multiple image of itself. As in the second class, here there is little or no interaction among the figures.(2)

Minne met Maeterlinck in 1886, at the age of twenty, the same year as the latter’s life-altering visit to Paris. The two became rather close friends, most likely because they shared the same melancholy, absorbed, and mystical disposition which can be seen in their works. This would indeed be a fruitful friendship because in the years following their acquaintance the two collaborated frequently. In the years 1886 to 1889 Maeterlinck read several of his early works to George Minne and asked him to provide illustrations for their publication. Among these are The Princess Meleine, his first drama which was received great praise by the critics (especially Octave Mirbeau), and his first published collection of poetry, Serres Chaudes.

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(1) Pudles, Lynne. “The Symbolist Work of George Minne.” Art Journal. College Art Assoc. Summer, 1985.

p. 120

(2)Ibid. p. 121