Frans Binjé (1835–1900)
Paysage avec écluse (Landscape with Lock), n.d.

Oil on board
McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Gift of Charles Hack and the Hearn Family Trust

Jeffery Howe
Professor Emeritus, Art History

Binjé was a self-taught artist who worked for the Belgian railway. Until his forties he painted only in his spare time. In 1874 he began working with artists of the School of Tervuren, and was especially influenced by Hippolyte Boulenger.

This painting depicts a small rural lock, a humble but important feature of rivers used for navigation in the lowlands. It reveals the growing influence of the impressionists on him in its flowing and visible brushwork in the foreground (in contrast to the smoothly blended sky). Fellow Belgian painter Fernand Khnopff (1858–1921) praised Binjé’s “delicacy of sentiment and bold colouring.”