For the new Horizons section of Art Brussels 2026 Dürst Britt & Mayhew is proud to present a rare monumental work from 1992 by Jacqueline de Jong (1939-2024).
This loose hanging painting is an outstanding example from De Jong's 'Sailcloth' series from the 1990s. Working on sailcloth started with a commission for a branch of the Dutch National Bank in Drachten in the province of Friesland in 1992. De Jong was fascinated by the many shipyards in the area, where skûtsjes (the iconic Frysian cargo boats) were built and thus she came across various discarded pieces of sailcloth.
The work she created for the Bank has been shown internationally at WIELS in Brussels, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen in Switzerland, Kunstmuseum Ravensburg in Germany, Les Abattoirs in Toulouse, and NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale. The sister work we show at Art Brussels is one of the largest pieces De Jong ever created. In this key work within De Jong's oeuvre violence, eroticism and humour converge on a grand scale, as if in an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett.
Working on sailcloth was an important turning point for the artist, as it allowed her to step beyond the frame of the painting. It provided her with more dimensions, as she could stretch the painted sails across the walls like tapestries or drape them like theatre curtains. This interest in the third dimension was actually initiated in 1988 by a commission from the Dutch Opera House (De Nederlandse Opera) to create the poster and programme book for their production of 'Madama Butterfly'. She thereto created a series of three-dimensional works with Japanese paper, depicting Cio-Cio-San, the tragic heroine in Puccini's opera.
In this particular work Cio-Cio-San returns; you see her dressed in white, hanging upside down, with a knife to her throat. She is surrounded by De Jong's typical hybrid monster-like figures, who seem to be roaming about in a snow covered Alpine landscape. It is a chaotic scene, reminiscent of De Jong's famous 'Suicidal' and 'Accidental' paintings from the 1960s, but also of her 'Dramatic Landscapes' from the 1980s, and serves as an important precursor to the large scale monster dominated works she created in the last four years before her death.
Jacqueline de Jong: 'Painting on sailcloth started with a very big work, a seven metre-long sail, which I made for a branch of the Nederlandse Bank in Drachten (in the province of Friesland) in 1992 entitled ‘De achterkant van het bestaan’ (The back- side of existence). The work was suspended in the bank and painted on both sides, like a division between the counters and the public. I thought the counters should also have something to look at. It was supposed to shield the visitors from the people counting the money. In fact the architects instructed me to make something of a fence, and I thought, I have to make a sail. In Drachten they have lots of ships and sails, and I started to look out for sails. I found out that there’s so many beautiful sails, old sails, and just began to gather quite a lot of material. From then on I made a lot of works on sail. It’s not common at all, quite unusual in fact, but it’s a fantastic material and for quite some years I worked only on sail, sparked by this one commission at the bank.' *
*Excerpt from an interview by Anna Gritz (director Haus am Waldsee in Berlin), commissioned for the exhibition 'Plankenkoorts' at Dürst Britt & Mayhew in 2021.
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