SOLD
Country of origin: Belgium
Medium: Oil on canvas
Signed: Signed lower left and dated 1913
Dated: 1913
Condition: Very good original condition
Size: 32.00" x 32.00" (81.3cm x 81.3cm)
Framed Size: 43.00" x 41.00" (109.2cm x 104.1cm)
Provenance:
We would like to thank Mr. Piet Boyens for confirming the authenticity of this work.
This painting is part of a series started by the artist in 1905 of the village of Deurle, commune of Sint-Martens-Latem, where De Smet settled permanently in 1906. Sint-Martens-Latem symbolizes for Léon de Smet an escape from industrialized society and a return to nature. This luminous painting is a marvelous example of the impressionism so defended by the artists of the second School of Sint-Martens-Latem, it crystallizes their vision of the world on the philosophical and aesthetic level.
1909
Oil on panel
£3,300.00
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The Artists Garden
by Henri Duhem
c. 1910
Oil on canvas
£23,000.00
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Provencher’s Mill – Moret-Sur-Loing
by Pierre Eugene Montezin
1947
Oil on canvas
£5,850.00
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La Plage a Soorts-Hossegor
by Maurice Brianchon
1881
Oil on canvas
£79,500.00
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Le peintre en plein air
by Charles Theophile Angrand
1940
Oil on canvas
£6,950.00
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Route a Mougins
by Jules Cavailles
c. 1880
Oil on canvas
£6,200.00
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Fishing on a stream by the coast – Normandy
by Jean Baptiste Antoine Guillemet
1915
Oil on panel
£2,650.00
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The Great War – Soldier & horse on a road
by Andre Devambez
1937
Oil on original canvas
£9,950.00
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The Old Farmyard – Sørup
by Peder Mork Monsted
1903
Oil on canvas
£22,500.00
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Pont D’Austerlitz
by Nikolai Aleksandrovich Tarkhoff
1909
Oil on panel
£3,750.00
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Figures in a village
by Henri Duhem
1910
Oil on canvas
£21,500.00
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La Moisson a Thomery
by Pierre Eugene Montezin
c. 1910
Oil on board
£6,450.00
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Port d’Honfleur
by Henri Lienard De Saint Delis
Léon de Smet studied, as did his brother Gustaaf, at the Academie voor Schone Kunsten in Ghent, where his mentor was Jean Joseph Delvin. Although he lived in Laethem-St-Martin between 1906 and 1913, he was not a member of the Laethem Expressionist group, being primarily influenced by Impressionism. He became a member of the Luminist Life and Light ( Vie et Lumière) Group alongside Theo van Rysselberghe. In 1914, while his brother Gustaaf was in self-imposed exile in the Netherlands after the outbreak of World War I, Léon de Smet moved to Germany. He returned to Brussels after the war and finally settled in Deurle in 1926.
Spending some time in England, de Smet painted chiefly portraits of authors, including those of John Galsworthy, George Bernard Shaw and Joseph Conrad, as well as portraits of London society figures. Immediately after the war, he flirted briefly with Expressionism but soon reverted to his Impressionist style with which, unlike his Expressionist counterparts, he celebrated predominantly 'happy moments', as exemplified by his Bath-time and Harmony in White (1909), Interior (1912), Deurle in the Snow (1938) and Intimacy (1941).
De Smet's work featured at the 1909 Venice Biennale, and he also exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in London. Following his death, his work was shown at the De Vuyst gallery in Lokeren, most notably in 2003.
Museum and Gallery Holdings
Antwerp (Mus. Flamand): Portrait of Herman Teirlinck; Portrait of Auguste Vermeylen; Portrait of Styn Streuvels
Brussels (Mus. royaux)
Deurle (Mus. Leon De Smet)
Ixelles (MBA)
