Gustave Cousin, De Poesje, Reverse Glass Painting, 1986

Reverse glass painting by Gustave Cousin (1913-2012, Antwerp) showing a puppet performance of 'the three musketeers' in the basement theatre named 'De Poesje'. 

Most of Cousin's works are done on glass, building up paint layers from the back, mostly repurposing old frames.
He was self-taught as an artist but worked for a while as an assistant in Floris Jesper's atelier, where he saw the technique first hand and later appropriated it. He scratches into the paint layers and pastes pieces of coloured aluminium behind the create highlights. An annotation on the right side reads: 'The three musketeers. There are only 2, the others are...'. We are left to fill in the blank. 

The artist painted life in Antwerp, bars, sex-workers, puppet theatres and many many flower still-lifes. 
Gustave Cousin was exhibited in 2023 at Aboli Bibelot. This piece was found later but fits into a series of paintings he did of De Poesje. 

Professionally framed. 31 x 41 cm.