L'estacade à Ostende, XXXXI
(Ostend pier, XXXXI)

1985, pen and ink drawing, 27 x 35.8 cm
Coll. Gaston Bertrand Foundation

In the 1980s, Bertrand and his wife took the habit of spending the month of September in Ostend. Thirty years earlier, the painter already took some notations around the port, the pier and the beacon. He worked again on the same subjects but with a completely different approach, using pure lines which are found in a series of ink drawings providing an interpretation of the pier structures. Bertrand became aware of the relationship between natural space and pictorial space during his stays at the North Sea. This is also where he looked for the last time at a landscape with the eye of a painter.