Emile Claus

Emile Claus (September 27th 1849 - June 14th 1924), Belgian painter and the most brilliant figure of the Luminisme, was born with Vyve-Saint-Eloi small village from the Flandres on the edges from the Lys, sixteenth child of a family of rural tradesmen in 1849. Its vocation is early, at the twenty years age it is registered with the Academy of Antwerp and decides to be devoted entirely to painting. It exposes for the first time two scenes of kind in Brussels and in 1875 and 1879 embarks for North Africa, three years before the painter Théo Van Rysselberghe.

In contact with his/her friend, Théo Verstraete, its painting, tinted realism the old Gardener of 1885 , the Weeding machines of Flax of 1887, becomes luminous and is cleared up.

In 1889, it rents a workshop in Paris during three years that it occupies the winter, after its summers spent with Astene. His/her friend Camille Lemonnier speaks to us about his life of fever and passion which it éxalte, by reviving the heroic hours of Art in contact with the Masters of the impressionism which triumphs. He binds friendship with the painter intimist and Symbolist Henri-Eugene Sidaner and breaks with his old conventional manner to paint.

On its return the light will be the life of its fabrics and its own life: it paints with elementary colors, it breaks up the prism and refracts it through tons. In 1905, it exposes to Brussels with the artistic Circle, fifty-two fabrics which devote it like: the painter, who had inserted in art a new landscape; it had creates a Flanders of the painters whom painting still ignored. The great international exhibitions claim it with enthusiasm, the museums acquire its works and it founds in 1904, the Cercle Life and Light in which take part Ensor, and Georges Lemmen.

Taken refuge in London during the war, faithful to its vision of nature and deserving to be called its Painter of the Sun , he dies in Astene on June 14th, 1924.

Works

the old Gardener , 1885
Cows crossing the Lily/Passage of the cows , 1899
the chestnut 1906
In the church of Loo , 1916
One day sunny

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