Spilliaert began practising self-portraits in 1902-1903; from 1909 onwards, he would represent himself only sporadically. His self-portraits quickly evolved from physical description to deep introspection.

In 1907-1908, a year when the painter's output was particularly intense and qualitative, he produced up to fifteen self-portraits. The dozens of paintings and drawings from these years, as Bernard Dewulf would say, ‘burn with a strange fever’[1]. Our Self-portrait with Blue Background is one of the largest self-portraits in this series.

After a brief period at the Bruges Academy of Fine Arts between 1899 and 1900, Spilliaert spent most of his career as a self-taught artist in his native Belgian town of Ostend. However, he did not shy away from the complex exercise of self-representation. Around the age of twenty, Spilliaert travelled to Paris, where he befriended the writer Émile Verhaeren, whose mournful symbolist poems did not leave the young artist indifferent. An avid reader, Spilliaert also immersed himself in the writings of Poe, Baudelaire, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. There is no doubt that these ‘ dark’ writers and philosophers played a fundamental role in Léon Spilliaert's art, and particularly in his quest for the ‘’self‘’ through self-portraiture.

In the history of art, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, the individuality of the artist was increasingly asserted, and with it the desire to search for one's own image. While the painter's social status had long taken precedence, the Romantic artist was fascinated by his own psychology. The decorative framework that served to reinforce his image became obsolete; what he wanted to reveal was the reflection of his soul.

Spilliaert's series of self-portraits from 1907-1908 form a coherent ensemble. In his dark suit with a white collar, Spilliaert displays a pompous rigidity that ironically represents his bourgeois heritage. Confined in this rigid suit, a prisoner of appearances, he shut himself away in his self-portrait.

Spilliaert often worked at night at the time, suffering from insomnia and stomachache, waking up in the middle of the night and getting down to work after dressing impeccably.

Here, he is depicted in profile, his face in a three-quarter view, exposing the baldest part of his forehead. The light falling on this emaciated face reinforces the dramatic tone of the self-portrait and highlights the forehead, the seat of thought. His technique of combining Indian ink wash, pastel and pencil, however, gives the work a tenebrous light that is characteristic of Spilliaert's best works. With no scenery or frame, all the attention is focused on the face, where the eyes, with their blackened orbits, are filled with a disquieting strangeness, looking directly at the viewer, arousing in him, as in the seascapes and dykes, a fear of the deep.

‘It is a void where only the artist is, conscientiously observing himself. Spilliaert symbolically represented this emptiness in his 1907 Autoportrait sur fond bleue, in which the background envelops the figure like an unfathomable space with no material support. The dark blue surface, painted in pastel and chalk, vibrates to the rhythm of the chalk strokes, as if the glances exchanged between creator and model belonged to one and the same reality. (...) The image that Spilliaert draws here is a likeness, carefully crafted according to the features perceived and developed by the model herself. The exceptional fidelity of the representation, the subtle accents of colour in the hair and the hairs of the moustache, the lines of light at the root of the nose and on the lips, the absorbing flashes of light in the eyes, make this portrait an important milestone in self-analysis’ A. Adriaens-Pannier, Léon Spilliaert, Le regard de l'âme, Brussels, 2006, p. 72).

As mysterious as they are bewitching, Spilliaert's self-portraits cannot leave you indifferent. This Self-portrait against a blue background, exceptional in terms of its quality and size, somewhere between symbolism, expressionism and romanticism, is a major testimony to the work of Léon Spilliaert.

[1] Léon Spilliaert, Un esprit libre, Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, 2006, p.131