The Augustijnenrei in Bruges in the Morning, ca. 1917

During WWI the German expressionist and Die Brücke artist Erich Heckel lived in Flanders and worked as a volunteer for the Red Cross. During this period he frequently drew the Flemish landscape. Many of his drawings from that time have also been preserved: loosely drawn portraits or sketches of landscapes or townscapes in Bruges, Ghent and Roeselare. He probably intended to work up some of them, such as this view of Bruges, on canvas at a later date. Here we see the Augustijnenrei with the Augustijnen Bridge. This is not a faithful rendering of the scene but rather a free interpretation. The artist used very thin layers of paint, thereby almost creating the effect of a watercolour. The angular rendering of the sky and the dynamism of the rendering reveal the effects of Cubism and Futurism. The painting is still in the temporary frame (a canvas stretcher) in which Heckel originally sold it.