The mysterious and reclusive life of the convent is recurrent in Belgian symbolist literature and Mellery’s work.[1] For artists and writers of the turn of the century, entry into a religious order was a valid retreat from the inconsequential restlessness of life. In his 1889 Notes on Pessimism, Georges Rodenbach summarized a decadent stance: “It is necessary to practice renunciation, instead of delighting in things, become detached from them, and frozen in inaction awaiting the supreme promise, the immense peace of nothingness.”[2] The meditative world of the beguines provided the perfect vehicle evoking the nation's glorious past. In a fast-changing modern world, Mellery's art is consumed by nostalgia for a pre-industrial era. The otherworldly beguine, resurfacing in enigmatic dark drawings, is the opposite of a femme fatale. Instead, these somber sisters symbolize a life dedicated to serving all other living beings.

Vieille Beguine montant l'escallier or La Religieuse brings together two of Mellery's favorite themes: the staircase and the beguine, the ideal combination to express The Soul of Things. Beguines, part of a larger spiritual revival movement of the thirteenth century in the Low Countries, lived a pious life. Throughout the sixteenth century, these single or widowed women lived in semi-monastic communities, without taking vows and free to leave. For Mellery, they were the perfect symbols of a life of silence and serenity, transporting us to the paintings of his Flemish predecessors. The staircase stands for another transition, for the sisters are always climbing up. Like doors, stairs represent access to hidden parts of the mind.

As few works by Mellery are dated and themes reoccur, it is difficult to establish a chronology. La Religieuse most likely is a sketch executed by Mellery after a life model. The staircase still exists in the house he built on the same site as his family home, destroyed around 1897.[3] Quick scribbles chronicling the laywoman are smoothed out in the larger, more finished drawing After the Evening Prayer from circa 1910 revealing a preparatory delineation emphasizing light. Even so, the strong strokes capture the stillness and silence of a woman reflecting the fleeting of life.

[1] Donald Friedman, in: Les XX and the Belgian Avant-Garde. Prints, Drawings, and Books c. 1890, Spencer Museum of Art, 1992, p. 284

[2] Georges Rodenbach, “Notes sur le Pessimisme”, in: La société nouvelle, 1882, p. 208

[3] Suzanne Houbart-Wilkin, in: Belgian Art 1880-1914, New York 1980, p. 123