Leon de SMET (1881-1966) - Lot 98

Lot 98
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3000 - 5000 EUR
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Result : 30 000EUR
Leon de SMET (1881-1966) - Lot 98
Leon de SMET (1881-1966) Landscape with big trees Oil on canvas. Signed lower left. 74 x 114 cm Léon de Smet belongs to the school of Laethem-Saint-Martin, a meeting of avant-garde artists who took refuge in this small village in Belgian Flanders at the end of the 19th century. Several generations of artists followed one another. Younger than his brother Gustave, Léon De Smet arrived in Laethem in 1906 and adhered, like his fellow Ghent artists, to the luminist credo. From the start, he showed the most enthusiasm for the aesthetics in vogue and was the first to achieve success; a clientele of amateurs soon gathered around him. [His technique, developed from the luminism of Emile Claus, cultivates more sustained color chords and in some paintings adopts a divisionism which, at that time, appears even more categorically neo-impressionist than that of Van Rysselberghe. (1) He is also a brilliant portraitist of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. Exiled to London during the First World War, he was introduced into literary circles and was commissioned to paint portraits of great writers: Bernard Shaw, Joseph Conrad and John Galsworthy. Our painting, which perfectly embodies the luminist approach stemming from Neo-Impressionism, is not exempt from the influence of "fin de siècle" Symbolism, with its spindly trees with sinuous trunks and the light fog enveloping the solitary farms. (1) Serge Goyens de Heusch, L'Impressionnisme et le Fauvisme en Belgique, Editions Fonds Mercator, Albin Michel, 1988.
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