Emile Claus - Art

Art

During his years in Antwerp, Claus mainly painted portraits and realistic, anecdotal genre pieces.

One of his best known early works is Cock Fight in Flanders (1882). The realistic painting portrays the dignitaries of Waregem of the time, collected around a small arena with two fighting roosters. It is now property of the family Devious and hangs at the manor of the former lords of Potegem, at Waregem (Belgium)

Stimulated by his friend, the author Camille Lemonnier, and influenced by the French impressionists, like Claude Monet whose works he got to know during his trips to Paris in the 1890s, Claus gradually shifted from naturalistic realism to a very personal style of impressionism called 'luminism', because of the luminous palette he used. His paintings The Beet Harvest (1890) and The Ice Birds (1891) represent important turning points in this evolution.

The Beet Harvest shows farmers harvesting sugar beets, hacking them out of the frozen field. The painting is gigantic in size and hangs at the Museum of Deinze and de Leiestreek in Deinze, Belgium. Claus never sold it and after his death, his widow donated it to the city of Deinze on the condition they built a museum to exhibit it. The painting can now indeed be found at the Museum van Deinze en de Leiestreek (museum of Deinze and the Lys area') in Deinze (Belgium).

  • The Beet Harvest (1890)

  • Claus in his workshop, with the Beet Harvest in the background

The Ice Birds (1891) shows an icy landscape with playing children. The painting was inspired by the novella of the same title by the Waregem novelist Léonce Ducatillon. The naturalistic story is set at the Keukelmeersen (‘keukel meadows’), a swampy area with dips, drains, ditches and trenches near the centre of Waregem. Every winter, it got flooded and changed into a wide icy plain. At the end of the story, one of the poor hungry boys falls through the ice while trying to pull out a frozen fish, and drowns. The painting is now part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent (Belgium).

Claus is considered to be the pioneer of Belgian luminism. In 1904, he founded the society Vie et Lumière ('life and light') and became known as the 'sun painter' and the 'painter of the Lys'. A magnificent example is his painting Cows crossing the Lys, which shows a group of motley cows being herded across a small river, with sunlights reflecting off the moving water. The painting hangs in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels (Belgium).

During the First World War, while in exile in London, he painted a series of views on the river Thames, known as "reflections on the Thames", in the style of Monet. They are his most traditional impressionist works.

Other well-known works by Emile Claus are:

  • The Old Gardener, 1885

  • On the Way to School

  • Bringing in the Nets, 1893

  • First Communion, 1893

  • Hay stacks, 1905

  • Summer

  • A Meeting on the Bridge

  • The caving in bank

  • Picking Blossoms

  • Afternoon along the River

  • Orchard in Flanders

  • Waterloo Bridge in the Sun, 1914-18?

  • Country Life

In 2007, the paintings The Beet Harvest and The Ice Birds have been included in the cultural heritage list of the Flemish community.

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