The Melancholy of the Belgian Twilight Edgar Bytebier did not paint the bright, midday sun; he painted the fading light. Born in Ghent, Belgium, in 1875, his work captures a specific, heavy atmosphere that defines the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. He was a painter, draftsman, and lithographer who focused on the quiet, often lonely corners of the landscape. His canvases do not shout. Instead, they whisper of the misty, somber evenings found in the surroundings of Dilbeek and Brussels. There is a persistent sense of nostalgia in his brushwork, a refusal to look away…