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Painters
(For this section, we are largely endebted to Mrs. Olga Mataev of New York, with her splendid website "Olga's Gallery")
During the period from the 14th to the 17th century the land produced an unbelievable amount of talented artists, including some men of absolute genius.
Melchior Broederlam (d. 1409)
The first Flemish painter whose name is known to us, was Melchior Broederlam, active from 1387. He lived in Ypres, and was court painter to the Count of Flanders and the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Bold. Of all his works only two side panels of an altarpiece, which he painted for the Carthusian monastery at Dijon (Burgundy, F) between 1392 and 1399, survived. However, through records we know that he was a highly regarded and influential master of his time. He was also a bright manuscript illuminator. (more)
Robert Campin (1375-1444)
The first master in Flanders who tried to change the established way and add new imagery to his paintings was Robert Campin , also known as the Master of Flémalle. The realism of the details, attention to faces, and depth in the compositions are characteristic of Campin. (more)
Jan van Eyck (1390-1441)
Jan van Eyck was not only one of the first artists who used oils, but he perfected this new technique so much that for a long time was considered to be the ìfatherî of oil painting. However, he certainly does not owe his fame only to this technique. He was faithful to nature, his figures were true to life, and his representation of space and his portraits made him one of the greatest painters of his time. His greatest work was the Ghent altarpiece, which he painted between 1425 and 1432. His elder brother, Hubert, started this work, but died in 1426. In 1430, Jan van Eyck settled in Bruges and opened a workshop, which was to become the base for the School of Bruges. Till the end of the 15th century, artists from Bruges remained the leading painters of Flanders. (more)
Rogier van der Weyden (1399-1464)
He was an apprentice of Campin in 1427; he experienced the influence of both great masters, Campin and van Eyck, and combined their discoveries with his own attitude. Unlike van Eyck, he devoted more attention to the general effect than to detail in his refined portraits. In his work all the attention is focused on the foreground. He was of the greatest influence on Northern European art until about the beginning of the 16th century. (more)
Dirk Bouts (Haarlem, 1415 - Louvain, 1475)
Bouts was born probably in Haarlem but active mainly in Louvain, where he was city painter from 1468. His major commissions there were the Last Supper altarpiece for the church of S. Pieters (still in situ, 1464-67) and two panels (out of a projected set of four) on the Justice of Emperor Otto for the City Hall (now at Royal Museum, Brussels). His style is highly distinctive and a convincing oeuvre has been built up for him. His static figures are exaggeratedly slender and graceful, and often set in landscapes of exquisite beauty. There is little action, but deep poetry of feeling. (more) (more) (on Bouts's perspective)
Petrus Christus (1415-1472)
He is first documented at Bruges in 1444, and he is thought by some authorities to have been the pupil of Jan van Eyck and to have completed some of the works left unfinished by the master at his death in 1444 (e.g. St Jerome, Detroit Institute of Arts). It is certainly true that he was overwhelmingly influenced by van Eyck, and his copies and variations of his work helped to spread the Eyckian style. Christus's work is more summary than van Eyck's, however, his figures sometimes rather doll-like and without van Eyck's feeling of inner life. The influence of Rogier van der Weyden is also evident. (more) (more)
Joos van Gent (alias Giusto da Guanto, Justus van Wassenhove, Ghent 1430 - Urbino, Italy 1476)
He was one of the few 15th-century Flemish painters known to have worked in Italy. Little is known of his early life, but documents indicate that he was admitted to the Antwerp Painters' Guild in 1460 and that four years later he was painting in Ghent. (more)
Hans Memling (or Memlinc, Seligenstadt, Germ. c. 1433 - Bruges 1494)
He was born in Seligenstadt, near what is today Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Memling first established himself as a painter in Brussels. In style and composition his work shows the strong influence of Rogier van der Weyden, the great Flemish painter. Because of this, Memling is thought to have studied under the older artist. In about 1466 Memling moved to Brugge, where his career prospered. Like many other Flemish masters, Memling painted with glowing colors and fine craftsmanship. Unlike most artists, his style varied little throughout his career.
Many of Memling's well-known religious works were painted for the Hospital of St. John in Brugge. These include Adoration of the Magi and six panels depicting St. Ursula's journey to Rome, which he painted for the hospital's shrine to that saint. Memling was a master of portraiture. The faces he painted with careful detail glow with life. The character of each is subtly suggested. In addition to the portraits Memling painted for the notables of Brugge, he also received commissions from foreign visitors such as Tommaso Portinari of the Florentine Medici. (more) (more)
Hugo van der Goes (Goes, Southern Netherland 1440 - Brussels, 1482)
In 1467 he became a master in the painters' guild at Ghent. He had numerous commissions from the town of Ghent for work of a temporary nature such as processional banners, and in 1475 he became dean of the painters' guild. In the same year he entered a priory near Brussels as a lay-brother, but he continued to paint and also to travel. In 1481 he suffered a mental breakdown (he had a tendency to acute depression) and although he recovered, died the following year.
No paintings by Hugo are signed and his only securely documented work is his masterpiece, a large triptych of the Nativity known as the Portinari Altarpiece (Uffizi, Florence, c.1475-76). This was commissioned by Tommaso Portinari, the representative of the House of Medici in Bruges, for the church of the Hospital of Sta Maria Nuova in Florence, and it exercised a strong influence on Italian painters with its masterful handling of the oil technique.
As remarkable as Hugo's skill in reconciling grandeur of conception with keep observation, is his psychological penetration in the depiction of individual figures. His last work is generally thought to be the Death of the Virgin (Groeningemuseum, Bruges), a painting of remarkable tension and poignancy that seems a fitting swansong for such a tormented personality. (more) (more)
Gerard David (Oudewater, Holland c. 1460 - Bruges, 1523)
He was born at Oudewater, in southern Holland, but he worked mainly in Bruges, where he entered the painters' guild in 1484 and became the city's leading artist after the death of Memling in 1494. At this time the economic importance of Bruges was declining, but it still maintained its prestige as a center of art and David played an important role in the flourishing export trade in paintings that it developed in the first quarter of the 16th century. His work was extremely accomplished, but conservative and usually rather bland. It was very popular and his stately compositions were copied again and again. (more) (more)
Jan Gossaert (alias Mabuse, Maubeuge near Mons 1462 - Breda 1541)
He started his career in Antwerp. Later he went to Rome for a few months, where he was strongly influenced by the classical sculpture, archtecture and mythological subjects. In 1515, Philip of Burgundy invited him to decorate the Soubourg palace near Middelburg (North of Bruges). He concentrated on mythological scenes and portraiture, favouring large-scale ìstatuaryî figures, which, although modeled on the ideal body of Italian antiquity, nevertheless bear traces of ordinary characters of the day.
He played an important role in enriching the Flemish painting style with Italian features and is considered one of the first important ìRomanistsî, who integrated the classical imagery in their work. (more)
Quinten Metsys (also Quentin, Massys, Louvain 1464 - Antwerp 1530)
At the beginning of the 16th century, Antwerp became the most important city in Flanders, its economical and cultural center. The most important Antwerp master of the first half of the sixteenth century was Quinten Metsys. Being influenced by the humanist ideas of Erasmus, Metsys made man the central component of his works. (more)
Joachim Patenier (also Patinir, Dinant near Namur1485 - Antwerp 1524)
The liberal atmosphere of Antwerp had an inspirational effect, and a new genre of painting, the landscape, was developed there in the 16th century. Patenier was a central figure in this development. His paintings still had figures, but they were completely integrated into the landscape, and that was an entirely different approach. His paintings were ëworld landscapesí; he introduced this fashion, and painting of landscapes from an ëelevated pointí was characteristic of the 16th century style in the Southern Netherlands. (more)
Bernaert van Orley (alias Bernard, Barend, Brussels 1491-1542)
A painter of religious subjects and portraits and designer of tapestries and stained glass. He was the leading artist of his day in Brussels, becoming court painter to Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands, in 1518 and to her successor Mary of Hungary in 1532. His work is characterized by the use of ill-digested Italianate motifs. There is no evidence that he visited Italy, and his knowledge presumably came from engravings and from Raphael's tapestry cartoons, which were in Brussels c.1516-19; he has (very flatteringly) been called 'the Raphael of the Netherlands'. In 1520, when Dürer visited the Netherlands, Orley gave a banquet for him, and Dürer drew his portrait. After 1530 he was chiefly occupied with designing tapestries and stained-glass windows. (more)
Herri met de Bles (alias Patenier, Antwerp c. 1500 - c. 1555).
He was Patenierís relative and apprentice. He is one of the most mysterious characters in the Flemish art. He was "a master of great patience, who used to spend much time and labor on his paintings, which were mostly of small size and had landscapes with tiny trees, rocks, towns, lots of little figures of people and various items. Bles was called ëthe painter of owlsí, because on nearly all his pictures he put a small owl, which mostly was so well hidden that spectators often bade who would find it first and spent hours looking for an owl.î
Bles followed Leonardo da Vinciís intructions on how to create depth in the landscape: objects in the distance disappear in a light mist. (more)
Pieter Coecke van Aelst (Aalst 1502 - Brussels 1556)
Painter, architect, sculptor, designer of tapestries and stained glass, writer, and publisher.
He is a pupil of Bernard van Orley, worked in Antwerp and travelled to Rome and Constantinople. His mission to gain business there for the Brussels tapestry works was unsuccessful, but the drawings he made on his journey were later published by his widow Mayken Verhulst as woodcut illustrations ("The Manners and Customs of the Turks"). He ran a large workshop and was regarded as one of the leading Antwerp painters of his day, but his work is not very creative. He is more important for his publishing activities. The translation of the architectural treatise of Sebastiano Serlio(Tutti l'opera architecttura, 1537-1547) that he issued from 1539 played a large part in spreading Renaissance ideas in the Netherlands (it was from the Dutch edition, not from the Italian original, that the English translation of 1611 was made).
Pieter Bruegel the Elder was his son-in-law and his pupil, but there is no much trace of Coecke's influence in his work. (more)
Pieter Breugel "the Elder" ( also Breughel, Bruegel, Brueghel --he sometimes changed the spelling of his name; Breda, now Holland c. 1525 - Brussels, 1569)
Accepted as a master in the Antwerp painters' guild in 1551, he was apprenticed to Pieter Coecke van Aelst, a leading Antwerp artist, sculptor, architect, and designer of tapestry and stained glass. Breugel traveled to Italy in 1551 or 1552, completing a number of paintings, mostly landscapes, there. Returning home in 1553, he settled in Antwerp but ten years later moved permanently to Brussels. He married van Aelst's daughter, Mayken, in 1563. His association with the van Aelst family drew Breugel to the artistic traditions of the Malines region in which allegorical and peasant themes run strongly. His paintings, including his landscapes and scenes of peasant life, stress the absurd and vulgar, yet are full of zest and fine detail. They also expose human weaknesses and follies. He was sometimes called the "peasant Bruegel" from such works as Peasant Wedding Feast.
He developed an original style that uniformly holds narrative, or story-telling, meaning. But it was in nature that he found his greatest inspiration. His mountain landscapes have few parallels in European art. Popular in his own day, his works have remained consistently popular. (more) (more)
Karel van Mander (Meulebeke 1548 - Amsterdam 1606)
Painter and writer. Founded, with Hendrick Goltzius, the Haarlem Academy.
Pieter Breugel the Younger (Antwerp 1564-1638)
He is the son of Piter Breugel the Elder. He followed his father. Known as "Hell Brueghel" because of his fascination with hobgoblins, fires, and grotesque figures. He is best known as a copyist of his father's paintings, as they were both popular and scarce. In his own canvases, such as Village Fair and The Crucifixion, he shows a firm grasp of space and movement.
Jan Brueghel (1568-1625)
Breugelís youngest son, Jan Breugel also became very famous for his landscapes and elegant floral arrangements. On the whole the Flemish landscapes of the 16th century were not landscapes painted from nature, but in them, various elements were combined to produce an ideal.
Pieter-Paul Rubens (also Peter, 1577 - Antwerp 1640)
Peter Paul Rubens was born into the family of a Calvinist who had to live in exile from Antwerp. On his father's death, Rubenís mother returned to Antwerp in 1587, where he was brought up and educated in the Catholic faith. He entered the household of a Flemish princess as a page, and began to study painting under a series of masters, including Tobias Verhaecht, Adam van Noort, and Otho Venius. In 1598, he was accepted as master in the Lukas Guild.
From 1600 to 1608 he went to Italy, working the court of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga in Mantua.1603, the duke sent him on a diplomatic mission to Spain. While in Italy, Rubens studied and copied Titian, Tintoretto, and Raphael, he also admired the works of his contemporaries, including Caravaggio and Carracci. In 1609, back in Antwerp, he was appointed court painter. He received a flood of commissions from the church, state and nobility, and produced also sketsches for gobelins and engravings. Between 1623 and 1631 he traveled frequently on diplomatic missions, visiting London and Madrid. After the death of Archduchess Isabella he gradually withdrew from the court and bought castle Steen near Malines.
Rubens is often called Prince of Baroque painters. In his style he successfully united the features of Flemish art with those of Italy. His influence on the painters of his century was enormous, as it was on sculpture and architecture.He was endlessly active: there are thousands of works by his
hand, scattered through collections and museums across the world. The paintings amount to more than three thousand. He also gave the world
the great number of pupils, the celebrated artists van Dyck, Jordaens, Snyders and Cornelis de Vos are among them.
He was also an architect.
Jacob Jordaens (Antwerp 1593-1678)
He was the pupil of Adam van Noort, under whom also Rubens had studied briefly. Later Jordaens married van Noortís daughter, Catharina. In 1615, he joined the St. Lukas Guild and, in 1621, became its deacon. Jordaens painted religious, mythological, historical subjects, portraits and genre scenes, and big monumental decorations. He did not visit Italy and never tried to imitate the Italian style. His optimistic disposition makes him close to Rubens, in whose workshop he was employed several times. Jordaens adopted Rubensí style, making it his own, but lacks Rubensís inexhaustible fantasy. His color is brilliant and sensuous, emphasized by luminous whites and deep reddish tones.
Jordaens liked to paint burghersí families especially during feasts. After Rubensís death, Jordaens became the leader of the Antwerp school, carrying out innumerable commissions for Church and Court. In 1650, the artist adopted Calvinism, but continued to receive commissions from the Catholic Church. The masters of his workshop play more and more important role in fulfilling grandiose and pompous decorative works, and Jordaens himself gradually looses his originality.
Jacob Jordaens was one of the great Flemish Baroque painters along with Rubens and Van Dyck. (More from Olga's Gallery)
Frans Snyders (Antwerp 1579-1657)
This famous painter is primarily remembered for executing the animal figures in paintings by Peter Paul Rubens.
He trained under Pieter Brueghel the Younger and became a master painter in 1602, but it took a dozen more years for him to reach his maturity as an artist. It was then that Rubens asked him to collaborate on the animals in his paintings. Rubens also supplied Snyders with oil sketches of subjects that Snyders enjoyed using for his own large canvases.
Motifs sketched by Rubens continually reappear in his paintings. Snyders painted solidly and with great vigor. His skillful application of unbroken color and his employment of reflected light probably antedate Rubens's use of these techniques. Snyders also painted still-life subjects such as fruits and vegetables, and he may even have executed human figures in some of Rubens's paintings. Late in his career Snyders specialized in violent hunting scenes, which were then very popular. (more)
Anteunis van Dijck (also sir Anthony Van Dyck, Antwerp 1599-London 1641)
He is one of the greatest Flemish painters. He was born in the family of a rich silk merchant. He was trained by painter Hendrik van Balen in his workshop. In 1615, he already had his own workshop and an apprentice. In 1618 he was accepted as a full member of the St. Lukas Guild. In 1618-1620, he was working with Rubens as his pupil and assistant. He took part in the painting of the Jesuit Church in Antwerp. Although he was with Rubens little more than two years, the older master's style affected his own indelibly.
By his twenty-first year Van Dyck was already ripe for independence. His pride and ambition made it hard for him to stand in Rubens's shadow in Antwerp. He therefore accepted an invitation for London, where he stayed several months. In England he was able to study the numerous works of the masters
of Italian Renaissance, and he decided to finish his education in Italy, where he spent 6 years. He earned his livelihood by creating portraits especially of the Genoese aristocracy, and also was commissioned to paint some pictures for the Church Oratorio del Rosario in Palermo, Sicily.
He returned to Antwerp, where he was given a triumphal welcome, and where he stayed 5 years. In 1632, Charles I invited Van Dyck to England to be a court painter. He was knighted, and rewarded with a generous annuity. Sir Anthony van Dyck was crucial to Charles I: his portraits were designed to support the King in his claim to be absolute monarch. Anthony's only daughter was born a few days before his death. He was buried in the St. Paul Cathedral.
In his court portraits Van Dyck established a style of characterization that was to persist all over the Europe for more than two centuries. He was in particular a stimulus to English painters, such as Gainsborough, Reynolds and Lawrence. (More from Olga's Gallery)
David Teniers (the elder: Antwerp 1582-1649; the younger: Antwerp 1610 - Brussels 1694)
The younger was by far the greater, eclipsing in skill the work of his father. In all probability he was brought up in his father's studio, although it has been stated that he worked under Rubens, or under Brouwer. He certainly was on terms of intimate acquaintance with Rubens, but we hear nothing of this acquaintance until 1637, when he married Anne, the daughter of Brueghel, the pupil of Rubens, and the great painter came to the wedding.
He had ample means, was able to purchase a castle, to live in good circumstances, and eventually to obtain admission to the ranks of the nobility. He was a man of the greatest industry, and his delightful little works, perhaps numbering nearly eight hundred in all, are to be found all over Europe. As a rule, they are scenes from peasant life, painted in beautiful colour schemes and dexterously handled.
Adriaen Brouwer (Oudenaarde 1605 - 1638)
He was about sixteen when he went to Antwerp, and then to Holland. He worked in Haarlem in the workshop of Frans Hals (c. 1623-24) and then in Amsterdam. In 1631 he returned to Antwerp, became a member of the St. Lukas Guild and ran a small workshop. Brouwer was always in debt, spending some months in prison. It was Rubens, who highly appreciated the artist and owned 17 of his pictures, who probably obtained Brouwerís release. The artist spent his last years in the house of the known engraver P. Pontius, who worked with Rubens. Brouwer died at early age, in 1638 in Oudenaarde, during the Plague.
The life of the people was the central theme of his work. He combined the subjects of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and the stylistic influences of Frans Hals and Rubens with surprising and lively results. He specialized in genre scenes, which took place in shabby, dirty, small taverns and inns, visited by peasants, beggars, trampsÖ There are usually two planes in his pictures: in the foreground is the main compact group, in the background, in semidarkness of a tavern, are shadowy figures of other visitors, who mind their own business. Brouwerís technique is free and artistic. He also painted a number of extremely important works as a portraitist and landscape artist. (more)
MODERN FLEMISH PAINTERS
In the 19th century a flourishing school of romantic painters arose. They included some painters with international fame.
Gustaaf Wappers (also Gustave, 1803-1874)
Historical and genre painter. For many years director of the Antwerp Academy, he introduced the romantic school into Belgium. The last 15 years of his life were spent in Paris. His most famous work is Episode of the Belgian Revolt of 1830 (Brussels).
Hendrik Leys (also Henri, Antwerp 1815-1869)
He studied at the Antwerp Academy under F. de Braekeleer. By 1833 he was exhibiting historical subjects. He visited Paris in 1835 and 1839 and toured in Germany 1852, when his admiration for Dutch seventeenth-century masters (particularly Rembrandt and de Hooch) was supplanted by the discovery of the German sixteenth-century masters, Cranach, Holbein and Dürer. His work consistently illustrated Flemish history (he painted a series of episodes for the Antwerp Town Hall 1861-68). Alma-Tadema became his pupil in 1859. (more)
Alfred Stevens (1823-1906)
A Belgian artist living principally in Paris, Stevens painted polished and highly successful pictures. As much at home in avant-garde circles in the Batignolles as on the Boulevard, he was a friend of Manet and introduced him to Durand-Ruel in 1871. He was one of the first devotees of Japanese art, elements of which he intoduced as bric-a-brac into his society paintings.
Not to be confounded with the English painter Alfred Stevens (1817-1876)
Henri de Braekeleer (Antwerp, 1840 - 88)
He was trained by his father, a genre painter, and his uncle, Henri Leys, and devoted himself to scenes of everyday Antwerp life. As a lithographer and etcher, his work resembles that of Henri Leys. Towards the end of his life de Braekeleer did some dot painting (pointillisme avant la lettre), in which he achieved admirable effects of light.
James Ensor (Ostend, 1860-1949)
He attended the Brussels Academy, and become founder member of the group XX, from which he was nearly expelled because of the originality of his art. He began to be respected towards the end of the century. The theme of masks is central to work of Ensor: strangely compelling works of peerless originality, charged with meanings psychological, intellectual and pictural, passing indirect judgement on the nature of mankind and his deepest convictions. He is a precursor of Expressionism, he influenced Emil Nolde (who adopted his theme of the mask) and Paul Klee. His fantastical universe foreshadows Surrealism.
He is buried in the churchyard of "O.L.V. Vrouw ter Duinen" ("Notre Dame of Dunes"), a church which featured in many of his paintings, about 20-30 mins from the Ensor Museum. (essay and artwork) (the Archive)
Henri Evenepoel (Nice, F, 1872 - Paris, 1899)
Born to Belgian parents residing in Nice, he studied art in Brussels (Sint-Joost-ten-Node). He settled in Paris in 1892 and became a pupil of Gustave Moreau, with Matisse and Rouault among his fellow students. His sombre early work became much more colourful under the influence of Impressionism, and after a journey to Algeria in 1887-8 he adopted a brilliant palette which brought him to the verge of Fauvism. Scenes from the street life of Paris formed his main subject-matter and he was a sensitive portraitist with a special gift for depicting children and adolescents. His premature death at the age of 27 deprived Belgium of what might have been one of her greatest talents.
Théo van Rysselberghe (Ghent, 1862 - Saint-Clair, Var, F 1926)
He studies in Brussels, and paints is the rich and grandiose style of the time. After a trip to northern Africa and Holland (to study Frans Hals) his style becoimes more sombre and intimate. After the great success of some modern French painters in Brussels (Monet and Renoir) he switches to a more luminose style, far from his Flemish roots, and progreessively more impressionistic en pointillistic, seeking inspiration at the Flemish coast. After 1904, his style returns to realism, but keeps his luminosity, perhaps due to the fact he lives now in the French Provence.
The two "schools" of Sint-Martens-Latem near Ghent
These Schools included the greatest Belgian painters of the beginning of the 20th century:
The first school (1895-1901) with sculptor Georges Minne, painters Valerius de Saedeleer, Gustaaf van de Woestijne, Xavier de Cock and Emiel Claus, and poet Karel van de Woestijne. They tried to continue the great Flemish painting tradition.
Georges Minne (Ghent 1886 - St. Martens Latem 1941)
Studies in Ghent, Paris (with Rodin) and Brussels. Member of the XX-club. Settles in St. Martens Latem in 1898 and co-founds the first Latem School of Painting. See the sculptors section.
Valerius De Saedeleer ( Aalst 1867-Leupegem 1941)
This Landscapist is one of the most important figures of the first Latem School's period. Came under Pieter Breugel's influence and from 1908 on his landscapes show, in the frame of strict compositions, carefully chosen shades of colour which he tended to disregard in the latter years of his life.
Gustaaf van de Woestyne (also Gustave, Ghent 1881 - Brussels 1947)
He studied painting in Ghent. He first painted small portraits with a minute touch in a technique close to that of the primitive Flemish painters and then turned to religious compositions. He sought refuge in England during the First World War and his style became tougher. Van de Woestijne then adopted a more dramatic touch regarding lines and colours and expressed suffering and moral solitude in his religious paintings. He headed the Academy of Fine Arts of Malines between 1925 and 1928 and also taught at the Superior Institute of Fine Arts of Antwerp and at the Superior Institute of Decorative Arts in Brussels.
Xavier de Cock (1818-1896)
Studied in Antwerp under Ferdinand de Braekeleer. He worked also in the Painters' Villages of Barbizon (Fontainebleau, France), but returned to Flanders.
Emiel Claus (also Emile, Sint-Eloois-Vijve 1849 - Astene near Ghent 1924)
Painter of landscapes and genre. Studied in Antwerp under J. Jacobs. He was the leading artist of the Luminism. In 1879 he traveled to Spain and Morocco, and from 1882 his work is more realistic. Worked in Astene and in Paris, where he was influenced by Monet's impressionism. Worked in Zeeland and London during WW I.
The second school (1905-1910) was more expressionistic: painters Frits van den Berghe, Albert Servaes, Leon and Gustaaf de Smet, and Constant Permeke.
Frits van den Berghe (Ghent 1883 - 1939)
He studied at the Ghent Academy, and shared his workshop with Albert Servaes. He worked also in New York, but camke back to Europe. During WWI he stayed in Holland. His work shows his sensitivity for science, surrealism, psychoanalysis, literature and mythology. But his central theme is Man, in his capacities and tragical limits. He was a popular illustrator of magazines.
Albert Servaes (Ghent 1883 - Lüzern, Switzerland 1966 )
He studied at the Ghent Academy, and is considered as the first Flemish expressionist and the link nbetween the First and the Second School of St. Martens Latem. He started as a realist with schematic forms and a preference for religious themes. After WWI he became more a dramatic expressionist. His Stations of the Cross, which were found offensive by the Roman Catholic Church, were prohibited in churches. His ardent Flemish sympathies during WWII provoked his emigration to Switzerland. He left us a maginificent house, nowadays an charming hotel.
Gustaaf de Smet (also Gustave, Ghent 1877- Deurle near Ghent 1943
At the beginning of World War I Gustaaf de Smet headed for Amsterdam. In that time he painted in the post-impressionistic Luminist style. The influence of the Dutch artists and of French Fauvism, popular in Amsterdam was important. Gradually, de Smet changed his style to a more colorfull and widened plain of composition, and later on to an expressionistic tendency.The popularity of de Smet was rapidly rising, as a result of the frequent exhibitions of his work. After the war, he began moving back to Belgium, and in 1923 he permanently settled in Afsnee near Gent and St. Martens Latem. (more by R. Kuppperman)
Leon de Smet (Ghent 1881 - Deurle near Ghent 1966)
He received his artistic education at the Academy at Ghent. He painted from the beginning in an impressionistic way strongly influenced by Emile Claus who introduced luministic impressionism. His subjects where landscapes, figures and still life. His style is characterized by soft strokes. His interiors with figures are intimistic and dreamlike. During WWI he worked in London where he started a widely excepted career, in which he painted for example Bernard Shaw and other important members of the London society. Leon de Smet is hardly influenced by the modern movement of expressionism, but continued his career in his primary style of the impressionism.
Constant Permeke (Antwerp 1886 - Ostend 1952)
Constant Permeke was the son of a marine painter, Henri Permeke, who taught drawing at the Ostend Academy. He studied at the Bruges and Ghent Academies. He lived at St. Martens Latem from 1909 to 1912, where he came under the influence of Servaes. During the war he was gravely wounded and evacuated to England. Here we see the development of expressionism. After the war he lived briefly in Antwerp and in Ostend (expressionistic period), but finally settled in Jabbeke, between Bruges and Ostend. His house "De Vier Winden" (The Four Winds) is now the Permeke Museum. His work now consists mainly of landscapes, but he remained an expressionist to the end.
His work is an expression of his personality: a giant, he worked in large studios on large canvases; even his drawings are large. His character was uncouth and quick-tempered yet gentle and generous. The "Permeke vision" is based on massive simplification in which the expressive distortion of the body emphasises the "working" limbs and movements of the worker, and swelling fertile shapes the pregnancy of the mother-to-be. Also drawing was an important side of Permeke's work, especially in his Jabbeke years. His subject was usually the female nude. During the economical crises of the thirties Permeke began to sculpt. His subject, sculpted larger than life, was the human body, mainly the female nude.
Permeke is without doubt the biggest among all Flemish expressionists. He wanted to go back to the origin of nature and man. Therefore he neither choose the exotic of Gauguin nor the more threatening atmosphere of German expressionism. The fishers, farmers and females he took into picture are brought back to their essence: they are sublimated and therefore lifted to a higher level.
Rik Wouters (Malines 1882 - Amsterdam, Netherlands 1916)
He is the son of a furniture maker. He studies at the Academies of Malines and Brussels. His wife Nel becomes one of his important models. He admires Paul Cézanne and James Ensor. He works as sculptor and painter. He is mobilized, and his regiment flees to Holland, where all are imprisoned, as Holland wants to remain neutral. For his artistic qualities and also for his progressively developping face cancer he is set free, but dies the next year. Although his career was short, it was remarkably fertile. His "Fauvistic" style reflects joy and luminosity and a Cézanne-like warmth. (Google)
(also see sculptors' page)
Paul Delvaux (Antheit, Wallonia1897 - Veurne 1994)
He studied architecture and decorative painting at Brussels Academy. During the early 1920s he was influenced by James Ensor and Gustaaf De Smet. In 1936 he shared an exhibition in Brussels with René Magritte. He was given solo exhibitions at Brussels, London, Paris and Amsterdam. He was appointed professor at the Art & Architecture High School in Brussels, later president and director of the Royal Belgian Academy of Fine Arts. His international exhibitions included Lille, Rotterdam, Germany, Tokyo and Kyoto. He also became an associate member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts of France.
Many of his childhood experiences left an indelible impression on his future development, as for instance his Greek and Latin language courses and Homer's Odyssey. Music lessons were held in the school museum, allowing Delvaux to study the skeletons in the vitrines. Also Jules Verne's stories acted as a powerful stimulant to his childhood imaginary journeys, their characters appearing in his paintings as somewhat desiccated male scientists devoid of all emotional or imaginary elements. There is, however, one all-pervading motif in his works - woman. Delvaux's women are sphinx-like, with neither a past nor a future, musing, silent, beyond reach. He also portrayed temples and trains, but the great themes of his paintings became the existential conflicts of life and death, nude and skeleton, eros and thanatos, solitude within groups, desire and anxiety, male and female, nature and machine, warm feeling and cold science, past and future. Among archetypal details in Delvaux's works are the mirror, moon, sea, candle and book. And, last but not least, light is an important element: the play of light and strictly delimited shadow create an atmosphere of mystery. (more)
Paul Delvaux was one of the most important representatives of 20th century imaginary Surrealism. His paintings combine both modernist and classical features, and he has sometimes been called the painter of poems and dreams.
Considering his own work as a continuation of the great Flemish traditions, he settled for the last decades of his life in Flanders, where his impressive museum is located (St-Idesbald near Furnes/Veurne, at the coast).
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