#flemish expressionism

Gustave van de Woestyne  (Belgian, 1881-1947) La mère et son enfant / Mother and Child 1928 oil on canvas 209 x 190 cm.

Gustave de Smet  (Belgian, 1877-1943)

LE COUPLE AU VILLAGE / A Couple in a Village

James Ensor. Skeletons Warming Themselves, 1889, oil on canvas, 74.8 x 60 cm

© Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX

Ensor was one of the most original painters of the late nineteenth century. Populated with masks and skeletons, his macabre images are morbid commentaries on the human condition, his hometown of Ostend on the North Sea, Belgian history, and his own mortality. The enigmatic Skeletons Warming Themselves is among the artist’s masterpieces. He has placed three dressed-up skeletons in the foreground around a stove on which is written “Pas de feu” and under it “en trouverez vous demain?”—“No fire. Will you find any tomorrow?”

GUSTAVE DE SMET  (Belgian, 1877-1943)

LA MOISSON, 1936

oil on canvas, 62.2 by 77.2 cm

Gustave De Smet  (Belgian, 1877-1943)

Village view, Blaricum ca. 1916