When Charles de Coster invited Mellery in 1878 to produce illustrations for his Isle of Marken, it propelled his artistic output towards the Naturalistic movement of the Belgian avant-garde. Similar in spirit to the neo-gothic style of Bruges, the traditional costumes worn by the isolated islanders of Marken were based on sixteenth century fashion. Although there is different garb for the different seasons, for weddings and funerals, in general the clothing is egalitarian in that the entire community wears the same making no distinction for the elite. Marken was to Mellery what Brittany was to Gauguin: a lost paradise. Mellery’s year-long stay on the island represented a turning point in his career: distancing himself from his academic training, he introduced ideas of social conditions, heredity and environment as inescapable forces in shaping human character. Portraying the inner life of things, the meditative silence, achieved through the use of a limited palette and subdued coloring, Mellery veils the mundane of everyday life as mysterious and enigmatic.

One of the drawings executed on Marken is this interior included in the Le Tour du Monde magazine. However, a painting with the same interior raises questions when the artist actually was in The Netherlands. The painting, one of few dated works, is dated 1878, before Mellery is situated with certainty on the island. Could Mellery have visited on an earlier occasion then is generally assumed or did he predate the painting according to when the original idea was conceived? Because of the 1878 date, it is generally assumed that Mellery spent two years on Marken even if that is highly unlikely.[1] As few of the Marken works are dated, it is difficult to establish a chronology. That said, Mellery revisited this body of work throughout the 1880s, refashioning his subjects more conceptual in spirit.

Mellery’s painting Interior in Marken Island, better known as The Fiancée in the Pronkkamer inhabits the same magical interior as the drawing. However, although the woman remains in the exact same position, her suitor has vanished from the painting, as have the cat and kittens in the foreground. While the drawing concerns the interaction between the couple, the focus of the painting is the solitary maiden. Void of the anecdotal detail of the kittens symbolizing their courtship, the unchaperoned sullen girl in the painting hints to longing or absence. As the alternative title for the painting is the Fiancée in the stateroom, the absence of the courter furnishes it more mysterious. While Mellery followed De Coster's chronicle closely at first in his drawings, it is in the later compositions from the 1880s that the artist's transforms his ideas into mysterious narrations with Marken as a magical mise en scene.

[1] V. Vanhamme, Xavier Mellery: L'âme des choses, Amsterdam 2000, p. 19