De Boschère 1947
Jérôme Bosch (Jean de Boschère) 1947
[Editions du Cercle d’Art, Brussels, 1947, 39 pages + 32 illustrations]
[Also mentioned in Gibson 1983: 2 (A5)]
De Boschère first focuses on the (supposed) Bosch-portrait in the Recueil d’Arras. What strikes him most is that the eyes have been drawn asymmetrically. From this portrait he concludes that Bosch belonged to a type of person that can still be met in the Northern Brabant and Lower Rhine area: the type of the intelligent, vivid and inventive farmer. De Boschère further asserts that Bosch did not have a metaphysical or moral ‘system’, he only wanted to paint.
When De Boschère analyses individual works, he seems to have understood little about Bosch. As a matter of fact, half of the paintings mentioned by him are not analysed at all or are interpreted in an erroneous way. He doesn’t notice the frog coming from the mouth of the person leaning forward in The Conjuror (St. Germain-en-Laye), and the gypsy women who are fooling a lady on the central panel of The Haywain are ‘two sad women who are comforting each other and a mother taking care of her children’. It does not seem to matter much, as De Boschère himself asserts that he enjoys looking at Bosch’s paintings more than interpreting them.
[explicit]
