Emile Claus

Self-portrait , 1874

Emile Claus (born September 27, 1849 in Sint-Eloois-Vijve , † June 14, 1924 in Astene ) was a Belgian painter . He first successfully created portraits and genre paintings in an academic style, before he repeatedly stayed in Paris in the 1890s and appropriated the painting style of the French Impressionists . The artist's main works include landscape views of his Flemish homeland and paintings with motifs of the Thames , which were created during his exile in London . Claus is considered a pioneer of luminism and a main exponent of impressionism in Belgium.

Life

education

Cockfight in Flanders , 1882

Emile Claus came from a large family in Vive-Saint-Eloi, a Flemish village on the Leie , where his father ran a grocer. He began his artistic training at the drawing school in nearby Waregem . On the recommendation of the composer Peter Benoit , he studied from 1869 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp . Here he attended the classes of the painter Jakob Albert Jacobs, known for his conservative landscape paintings, and the academy director Nicaise de Keyser , who was known for his portraits and historical paintings. He partially financed his studies by painting religious sculptures. With a second prize, Claus successfully completed his training at the academy in 1874. He exhibited successfully in Ghent as early as 1875, and one year later in Brussels .

First successes

Claus established himself in the following years as a painter of portraits and genre paintings. His realistic painting style of this time is mostly kept in dark tones and shows anecdotal elements and social concerns. An example of this is the painting Wealth and Poverty from 1880 . With these descriptions of everyday life he stood in the tradition of Belgian painters such as Charles Verlat and Charles de Groux . In 1879 Claus traveled to Morocco and Algeria via Spain to study. However, the trip had no significant impact on the artist's work. He made his debut at the Salon de Paris in 1882 with his painting Cockfight in Flanders . Since then, the painter has been in Paris regularly - usually for several months in winter. Here he was particularly influenced by the painter Jules Bastien-Lepage , who chose similar motifs for his pictures as Claus and whose realism was related to the Belgian style. The old gardener from 1885, La Procession est là from 1886, as well as Les sarcleuses de lin and Pique-nique from 1887 are among the well-known pictures by Claus from this period .

In 1883 the now commercially successful Claus acquired Villa Zonneschijn in Astene, a village also on the Leie, not far from his birthplace. Claus often chose the river landscapes of his homeland as a motif for his pictures from this period, preferring clear colors and a realistic representation. In 1886 he married Charlotte Dufaux, the daughter of a notary from Deinze .

Paris and the influence of French impressionism

The Kingfishers , 1891

Despite his withdrawn life in the country, Claus was in lively exchange with other artists. These included the painters Albijn van den Abeele (1835–1918) and Constantin Meunier, as well as the writers Cyriel Buysse and Emile Verhaeren . Through his friends, the painter Henri Le Sidaner (1862–1939) and the writer Camille Lemonnier (1844–1913), he discovered the painting of the French Impressionists in Paris. This resulted in a significant lightening of his palette. Claus now used warmer colors and increasingly adapted his brushstrokes to the impressionist models. His now more spontaneous style of painting was aimed at depicting the moment and the interactions of light and shadow, behind which the form receded. After the first painting La Récolte des Betteraves from 1890 shows the new style of painting by Claus, it was above all his painting Die Eisvögel from 1891 with which he depicted a conventional genre theme in a new, significantly brighter atmosphere. Other well-known pictures from this period are the paintings La Drêve ensoleillée and Les Communiantes , from 1893 , and Cows Cross the Leie from 1899.

In Paris, Claus maintained close contacts with the writers Émile Zola and Maurice Maeterlinck and the Scandinavian painters Anders Zorn and Frits Thaulow . Claude Monet in particular was a role model for Emile Claus among the French impressionists . Parallels between the landscapes on the Leie river in the paintings by Claus and the views of the Île-de-France by Claude Monet, as well as in the depiction of grain shovels and the, can be seen not only in the painting style, but also in the choice of motifs later views of London by both artists. The repeated depictions of the same motif at different times of the day and seasons led Claus, like his role model Monet, to ever new variations of form and light in his paintings and thus made him a pioneer of luminism , as a result of which critics saw in him a significant innovator of Belgian art .

Artistic interactions

In the period up to the First World War, Emile Claus had numerous students who later became well-known artists themselves. These include Anna De Weert , Yvonne Serruys , Robert Hatton Monks , Torajirō Kojima , George Morren , Modeste Huys , Georges Buysse and Léon De Smet . The pupil Jenny Montigny (1875–1937), who became aware of Emile Claus through the exhibition of the painting The Kingfishers in Ghent in 1892, played a special role . Between Claus and Montigny, who was 26 years his junior, the teacher-student relationship developed into a love affair that lasted until Claus' death in 1924.

In November 1893 the Brussels artist group Union Artistique was founded , whose members included Emile Claus, Guillaume Vogels , Claus Verheyden , Isidore Verheyden , Léon Frédéric , Alfred Verwee and Théodore Verstraete . The aim of this group was - similar to the group exhibitions of the French Impressionists - the organization of exhibitions and the sale of pictures. Claus also repeatedly took part in exhibitions of the Brussels artists' association La Libre Esthétique , which was founded in 1896 and which, in addition to painting, also took part in literature and music. In addition, Claus sent paintings to exhibitions at the Berlin Secession several times and in 1904 founded the artist group Vie et Lumière together with the painter Georges Buysse , which was later joined by the painters James Ensor , William Degouve de Nuncques and Adriaan Joseph Heymans .

Exile in London

Sunset over Waterloo Bridge , 1916

Up to the First World War , Claus made numerous trips abroad. In addition to several stays in the Netherlands, he visited the United States in 1907 and the Côte d'Azur in 1914 . Shortly before the arrival of German troops in Astene, Claus fled from his place of residence to England. He settled in London and rented a studio on the fifth floor of Monbray House on the Thames . Numerous views of the Thames were created here over the next four years, a motif that Claus presented himself when looking out of his studio window. Following the example of Claude Monet and Maximilien Luce , Claus varied the river with his boats, the banks and the reflections on the water to different day and light conditions. This is how his diverse Thames pictures were created in the London fog, in snowfall and rain, in the dawn or in the evening mood. He exhibited these pictures, which show neo-impressionist features in painting technique and color decomposition, successfully in London and later in Brussels.

Aftermath

After the war, Claus returned to his home in Astene, where he died in 1924 and was buried in the garden of his Villa Zonneschijn . His grave is adorned with a marble sculpture by the sculptor George Minne . As one of the most important representatives of Belgian Impressionism, he exerted a great influence on the subsequent generation of artists in his country. In particular, his landscape paintings influenced painters such as Constant Permeke , Frits van den Berghe , Rik Wouters and Jan Brusselmans . As a celebrated painter, he had been a member of the Antwerp Academy of Art since 1905 and received numerous awards. This includes both the Belgian Leopold Order and the 1904 appointment as a Knight of the French Legion of Honor .

Works (selection)

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  The old gardener , 1885

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  Bringing in the nets , 1893

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  Canal in Zeeland , 1896–1899

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  Cows Cross the Leie , 1899

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  Portrait of the Wife , 1900

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  October morning on the Leie , 1901

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  Jenny Montigny , 1902

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  Grain stack in the snow , 1904

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  Midday in Esérel , 1914

literature

• Jan D'Haese: Retrospectieve Emile Claus . Kulturcentrum De Schakel, Waregem 1985.
• Götz Czymmek: Guillaume Vogels and Emile Claus, two Belgian impressionists . Exhibition catalog Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne 1988.
• Götz Czymmek (Hrsg.): Landscape in the light, impressionistic painting in Europe and North America . Exhibition catalog Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne 1990.
• Johan de Smet: Emile Claus . Exhibition catalog for the Retrospective Emile Claus in the PMMK Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Oostende 1997, Snoeck-Ducaju, Gent 1997, ISBN 90-5325-070-0 .
• William Hauptman: La Belgique dévoilée, de l'impressionnisme à l'expressionnisme . Exhibition catalog Fondation de l'Heremitage, Lausanne 2007, ISBN 88-7439-374-1 .
• Johan de Smet: Emile Claus & het landleven . Exhibition catalog Museum voor Schone Kunsten (MSK), Gent 2009, ISBN 978-90-6153-867-7 , French. Edition: Emile Claus & la vie rurale . ISBN 978-90-6153-868-4 .

Web links

Commons : Emile Claus  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files