La grande plage
(Large beach)

1940-1943, oil painting on canvas, 100 x 150.5 cm
Coll. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels
N ° inv. 110

La grande plage was painted at the beginning of the war and is one of the most “Ensorian” works of the artist: a beautiful orange-yellow tone suggests both the seawall and the beach separated by the line-up of beach cabins. Suggestive and airy figures, amusingly naive holidaymakers, are scattered over that large vibrating monochrome background: a memory of the painter’s stay in Koksijde in 1939. Bertrand explored that theme again – and for the last time- in 1947 with a small format (Marine avec personnages) which provides a bleaker atmosphere and is even more convincing given its visual and poetic quality.
The painter kept representing the theme of the sea over the following years, but human presence forever disappeared from his paintings as the artist only focused on the dunes’ natural structures and on the marine horizon.