Welcome to the mobile guide to the McMullen Museum of Art’s nineteenth-century Belgian paintings from the School of Tervuren, a gift from Charles Hack and the Hearn Family Trust. With this landmark gift, the McMullen now holds the foremost assemblage of Belgian landscapes in North America. Selections from the Charles Hack and the Hearn Family Trust Collection are hung throughout the McMullen Atrium and offices and will be rotated frequently.

• Introduction

  School of Tervuren

• 

  Frans Binjé

  Paysage avec écluse (Landscape with Lock)

• 

  François Bossuet

  Ostend. The Plain Viewed from the Top of the Dunes to the West

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  Hippolyte Boulenger

  Inondation en Ardenne (Flood in the Ardennes)

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  Hippolyte Boulenger

  Paysage (Landscape)

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  Hippolyte Boulenger

  Paysage avec meules de foin (Landscape with Haystacks)

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  Hippolyte Boulenger

  Retour à la ferme (Back on the Farm)

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  Henri de Braekeleer

  L’Escaut près d’Anvers (The Scheldt near Antwerp)

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  Joseph-Théodore Coosemans

  Étang de Robiano-Tervuren (Pond at the Castle of Robiano-Tervuren)

• 

  Joseph-Théodore Coosemans

  Paysage de Campagne (Landscape in the Countryside)

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  Louis-Joseph-Désiré Crépin

  Canal à Bruxelles (Canal in Brussels)

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  Louis-Joseph-Désiré Crépin

  Le Marly (Edge of the Willebroeck Canal)

• 

  William Degouve de Nuncques

  Vue de Stavelot (L’été, Ardenne) (View of Stavelot [Summer, Ardennes])

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  Jean-Baptiste Degreef

  Sous bois (Undergrowth)

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  Jean-Baptiste Degreef

  Vue de l’Escaut (View of the Scheldt)

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  Louis Doubois

  Sablonnière (Dunes)

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  Alfred William Finch

  Paysan ecobuant sont champ (Peasant Burning His Field)

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  Theodore Fourmois

  La Hulpe

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  Theodore Fourmois

  Paysage (Landscape)

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  Léon-Henri-Marie Frédéric

  Dunes at Heist

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  Léon-Henri-Marie Frédéric

  Haystack at Nafraiture

• 

  Léon-Henri-Marie Frédéric

  Heist

• 

  Frans Pieter Lodewijk van Kuyck

  Marais au crépuscule (Marsh at Twilight)

• 

  Jean Pierre Francois Lamorinière

  Paysage de Campine avec berger et moutons (Landscape in Kempen with Shepherd and Sheep)

• 

  Jean Pierre Francois Lamorinière

  Plaine a l’infini (Plain to Infinity)

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  Frans van Leemputten

  Impressions de l’Escaut (Impressions on the Scheldt)

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  Charles Mertens

  Parc à huîtres en Zélande (Oyster Park in Zeeland)

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  Isidore Meyers

  Au bord de l’eau (At the Water’s Edge)

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  Joseph Quinaux

  Rivière (River)

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  Théodore T’Scharner

  Barques (Ships)

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  Théodore T’Scharner

  Canal avec moulin (Canal with Mill)

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  Théodore T’Scharner

  Le Château d’Eysden

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  Théodore T’Scharner

  Paysage avec étang (Landscape with Pond)

• 

  Victor Uytterschaut

  Étang en hiver (Pond in Winter)

• 

  Théodore Verstraete

  La viellée (The Vigil)

• 

  Guillaume Vogels

  Barque à Trouville (Ship at Trouville)

• 

  Camille Wauters

  Coucher de soleil (Sunset)

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

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.”

Charles Hack and the Hearn Family Trust Collection index

François Bossuet (1798–1889)
Ostend. The Plain Viewed from the Top of the Dunes to the West, n.d.

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

Here, Bossuet demonstrates his fluency in the art of perspective as well as mastery of the technique of oil painting. The low horizon and expanse of clouds evoke a traditional setting prevalent in Netherlandish painting of the seventeenth century. Tiny figures add a sense of scale to the deep landscape. In the early 1830s Bossuet worked as a civil servant, before being appointed professor of perspective at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels in 1835, after having published a two-volume book on the subject.

Charles Hack and the Hearn Family Trust Collection index

Hippolyte Boulenger (1837–74)
Inondation en Ardenne (Flood in the Ardennes), n.d.

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

The thick swirling brushstrokes of this high-water scene in the Ardennes, a rich study in grays, embodies the artist’s exploration of nature and energetic technique. Individual features of the landscape are downplayed in favor of an almost abstract scene composed of the elements of earth, air, and water. The dark, turbulent sky appears to be as solid as the land below it, while the floodwater fills the frame with a slightly calmer surface, mirroring the clouds and sunlight.

Charles Hack and the Hearn Family Trust Collection index

Henri de Braekeleer (1840–88)
L’Escaut près d’Anvers (The Scheldt near Antwerp), n.d.

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

Although known today primarily for detailed interiors that feature views through windows (see image), de Braekeleer also painted wonderful landscape scenes in the environs of Antwerp.

The juxtaposition here of a muddy riverbank with the distant silhouette of Antwerp’s skyline of towers exemplifies his realism. Although derived from panoramic formats in Northern Baroque landscape paintings, the wide format of this small painting also must be indebted to the popularity of panoramic photographs in the nineteenth century.

De Braekeleer studied at the Antwerp Academy from the time he was fourteen. His uncle was the famous history painter Henri Leys, and de Braekeleer learned much from him. De Braekeleer won a gold medal at the Brussels Salon in 1872, and a medal of honor at the World’s Fair in Vienna in 1873.

Charles Hack and the Hearn Family Trust Collection index

Joseph-Théodore Coosemans (1828–1904)
Étang de Robiano-Tervuren (Pond at the Castle of Robiano-Tervuren), 1863

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

After a career as the town secretary in Tervuren, Coosemans came late to painting. He received his first lessons from Théodore Fourmois. This twilight scene is one of Coosemans’s earliest works, and represents an already accomplished example of tonal subtleties. As the shadows fall, a man sits on the edge of a pond fishing, accompanied by a woman. The air is calm, and the trees are mirrored in the glassy surface of the pond. At left, a sheep and a lamb add to the domestic harmony.

Charles Hack and the Hearn Family Trust Collection index

Joseph-Théodore Coosemans (1828–1904)
Paysage de Campagne (Landscape in the Countryside), 1866

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

This dramatic landscape shows a more vigorous technique, suited to capturing a windy day. The diagonal row of trees serves as a windbreak, important in the lowlands of Belgium where strong winds often blow off the North Sea. In the distance at left, small figures pick up stacks of hay with a wagon, but the artist is clearly more interested in the light, shade, and wind that shapes the land. Two years after he painted this scene, Coosemans became a founding member of the Free Society of Fine Arts in Brussels, an independent avant-garde artist association dedicated to realism, and by 1876 he was cited as “the current leader of the School of Tervuren.”

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Louis-Joseph-Désiré Crépin (1828–87)
Canal à Bruxelles (Canal in Brussels), 1878

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

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the urban fabric of Brussels changed radically. The River Senne was covered and broad new boulevards cut through the city along the path of the old city walls. As in Paris during the same period, medieval areas of Brussels were demolished and modernized. While still important for commerce, canals were surpassed by railroads as the primary mode of transportation. Crépin’s painting captures a moment in the city’s history that will soon be lost. After years of neglect, Brussels is reclaiming the canal district.

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Louis-Joseph-Désiré Crépin (1828–87)
Le Marly (Edge of the Willebroeck Canal), 1877

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

Louis Crépin painted with Joseph Coosemans at Tervuren. He also was a founding member of the Free Society of Fine Arts in 1868. His painting Le Marly is an impressionistic depiction of an inn on the bank of the canal that runs from Brussels to the port of Antwerp. The Willebroeck Canal served commerce but was also popular for recreational excursions. This is a precious reminder of the natural environs in an area that is now largely developed with industrial plants and housing.

Charles Hack and the Hearn Family Trust Collection index

Hippolyte Boulenger (1837–74)
Paysage avec meules de foin (Landscape with Haystacks), n.d.

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

Here, the artist uses a disciplined brush technique of small, parallel strokes to capture the quiet peace of an agricultural scene. The hay is stacked in a long row at the end of the field, unlike the conical stacks depicted by Claude Monet in his famous series. The lengthening shadows suggest that this is the end of the day. The scene is calm and restful, and no workers are in view, but the large harvest is a testament to the bounty of the land.

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Hippolyte Boulenger (1837–74)
Paysage (Landscape), n.d.

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

This radically simple watercolor sketch of the Belgian countryside, probably in the vicinity of Tervuren, uses masses of color and free-floating pencil marks to capture the rural landscape, defining contours of the land and tracing the shapes of clouds. Delicate washes of blue depict the sky above a red farmhouse in the distance. This quick sketch omits any details in its abstraction. In its simplicity, it gives a glimpse into the creative process of the artist.

Charles Hack and the Hearn Family Trust Collection index

Hippolyte Boulenger (1837–74)
Retour à la ferme (Back on the Farm), 1869

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

In 1864 Boulenger became the first painter to settle in the environs of Tervuren, a small village just to the east of Brussels. He painted this picture a few years later at a happy and productive time of his life, the year that he married. Bathed in the fresh light of spring, the landscape shows a farmhouse nestled behind trees and cut off at the right. A large flowering tree sprawls to the left to shade two small figures and a flock of sheep. The scene is calm, but bursting with life and contentment.

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William Degouve de Nuncques (1867–1935)
Vue de Stavelot (L’été, Ardenne) (View of Stavelot [Summer, Ardennes]), 1925

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

In 1919, Degouve returned to Belgium, establishing himself in Stavelot, an ancient town in the Ardennes near Spa. This sun-drenched image shows a deep vista of the Ardennes viewed from a hilltop fringed with conifers. Here he returns to the light-filled scenes he painted before the war. Nature offers the promise of new life and continuity after the desolation of trench warfare. The fresh colors and peaceful landscape provide an image of hope.

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Jean-Baptiste Degreef (1852–94)
Sous bois (Undergrowth), n.d.

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

In 1870 Degreef discovered the ancient abbey of the Red Cloister in the forest of Soignes on the outskirts of Brussels; he moved there in 1883. The abbey had been associated with artists since it offered refuge to the early Flemish painter Hugo van der Goes, and it still houses an art school.

Many of Degreef’s works revealing fresh observations of nature and great sensitivity to light depict this setting. The bright colors and vibrant brushstrokes display the influence of impressionism. Degreef was a member of La Chrysalide (1875–81), a progressive artistic association founded by Belgian painter and printmaker Félicien Rops.

Charles Hack and the Hearn Family Trust Collection index

Jean-Baptiste Degreef (1852–94)
Vue de l’Escaut (View of the Scheldt), n.d.

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

The monumental Gothic cathedral and bustling commercial docks of Antwerp are far in the distance, across the Scheldt River. Degreef has focused on a muddy dock with small boats. A couple sheltered by an umbrella strolls in the foreground at the right in this scene of realistic ordinariness. The muted atmosphere is subtle but richly colored, and the moisture-laden air is luminous.

Charles Hack and the Hearn Family Trust Collection index

Louis Dubois (1830–80)
Sablonnière (Dunes), 1879

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

Louis Dubois was an energetic supporter of Gustave Courbet, who led the French realism movement. A founder of the Free Society of Fine Arts in Brussels and a collaborator on their journal, L’Art Libre, Dubois adopted Courbet’s painterly approach as seen here in his vigorously rendered study of sand dunes on the Belgian coast. Although only a sketch, it is a dynamic composition of intersecting diagonals and strong contrasts of light and dark.

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Théodore T’Scharner (1826–1906)
Barques (Ships), n.d.

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

The subtle tonalities of T’Scharner’s style capture the luminosity of the sky and its reflections in the water below. The dark forms of the ships make a strong contrast with the light in the sky, which is defined by vigorous strokes with a broad brush.

Like fellow artist Félicien Rops, T’Scharner was born in Namur where he received his first artistic training at the Academy. From 1850 to 1853 he traveled in California, producing drawings of scenes of the Gold Rush. He returned to Belgium in 1854.

Charles Hack and the Hearn Family Trust Collection index

Théodore T’Scharner (1826–1906)
Canal avec moulin (Canal with Mill), n.d.

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

T’Scharner was a member of the Free Society of Fine Arts (1868–76) in Brussels. He painted scenes of the villages and coast of Belgium in the style of early impressionism, with bright colors and painterly brushwork. This picturesque scene with a windmill, boats and tidy houses, recalls the classic landscapes of the seventeenth century by Dutch and Flemish artists.

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Théodore T’Scharner (1826–1906)
Le Château d’Eysden, n.d.

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

In 1870, T’Scharner moved into the Château d’Eysden near Maastricht, which he painted many times. The château dates to the seventeenth century, with later renovations. It is sited on the Meuse river, with extensive parkland, in the Belgian province of Limburg. T’Scharner focuses on the gatehouse in the foreground, silhouetting the château’s towers against the evening sky with the glow of sunset lighting the clouds. A small figure in black adds a note of mystery to the scene. Above the house, branches of the trees blend and blur into the sky.

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Théodore T’Scharner (1826–1906)
Paysage avec étang (Landscape with Pond), n.d.

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

T’Scharner’s primary interest here is the light effect of the sun bursting through the clouds, and its reflection in the surface of the pond below. Sketchy and spontaneous, it was probably painted outdoors (en plein air in French). The Belgian landscape may be flat, but the natural phenomena of clouds and sun create their own drama.

Charles Hack and the Hearn Family Trust Collection index

Alfred William Finch (1854–1930)
Paysan ecobuant sont champ (Peasant Burning His Field), n.d.

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

A farmer burning the brush from his field provided Finch an opportunity to explore effects of smoke against dark fields. He applies paint thickly, with the broad strokes of a palette knife, especially visible in the clouds of white smoke. Finch was a founding member of the avant-garde exhibition society Les XX in Brussels, which rebelled against the academic tradition. He later adopted a luminous neo-impressionist style, experimented with pottery, and in 1897 moved to Finland to lead a ceramics studio.

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Théodore Fourmois (1814–71)
La Hulpe, 1865

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

Fourmois was one of the first Belgian artists to break away from the traditional formulae of landscape imagery and add fresh, direct observations. His depiction of the landscape at La Hulpe is a bucolic scene of cows browsing in a pasture with a light-filled valley in the distance.

A substantial barn may be glimpsed behind two large shady trees, which highlight the artist’s natural rendering of the chiaroscuro effect of contrasting sunlight and shade.

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Théodore Fourmois (1814–71)
Paysage (Landscape), 1867

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

Echoing Flemish and Dutch Baroque landscapes, this painting captures the peaceful beauty of the Belgian rural landscape. The clouds and broken tree recall both Baroque naturalism and the scientific studies of the Romantics. Shafts of light illuminate the farmhouse and fields. Fourmois was a forerunner of the School of Tervuren, visiting there often in the 1840s and 1850s.

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Léon-Henri-Marie Frédéric (1856–1940)
Dunes at Heist, ca. 1905

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

A minimalist study of the sandy dunes on the Belgian coast, where the arc of the large dune at left is mirrored in the clouds coming in from the sea. Only sparse vegetation dots the landscape.

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Léon-Henri-Marie Frédéric (1856–1940)
Haystack at Nafraiture, n.d.

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

Nafraiture is a small town in the southern Ardennes where Frédéric spent many summers. He painted landscapes there, as well as studies of some of the rural citizens. This view of a conical haystack in its field is his realist response to Claude Monet’s own famous series. Although his brushstrokes are broad and visible in the muddy road and cloudy sky, his stack is more tightly defined and his color more natural and less prismatic than Monet’s.

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Léon-Henri-Marie Frédéric (1856–1940)
Heist, ca. 1905

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

The sandy Belgian coast had long been popular with Belgian artists. Frédéric focuses on the undulating dunes near the North Sea resort town of Heist, now known as Knokke-Heist. Painted in the open air, he applies the paint freely and fluidly. Beyond the undulating dunes, red-roofed houses can be seen as well as a typical church steeple on the Belgian coast.

Charles Hack and the Hearn Family Trust Collection index

Frans Pieter Lodewijk van Kuyck (1852–1915)
Marais au crépuscule (Marsh at Twilight), n.d.

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

Van Kuyck’s Marsh conveys his keen interest in light and color. Broad, visible brushstrokes reflect his focus on the process of making art. Painted in the open air, his direct observations of nature, like the shadow cast by the small boat, are richly detailed.

Van Kuyck was born and died in Antwerp. He was first taught by his father, Louis van Kuyck, and then studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp under François Lamorinière, an advocate of painting in the open air. He later became a teacher at the Academy, and served as deputy director there from 1895 until 1915. He was active in Antwerp politics and cultural affairs, and is credited with helping to establish Mother’s Day in Belgium—the first in the world—with a pamphlet published in 1913.

Charles Hack and the Hearn Family Trust Collection index

Jean Pierre François Lamorinière (1828–1911)
Paysage de Campine avec berger et moutons (Landscape in Kempen with Shepherd and Sheep), n.d.

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

Born in Antwerp, Lamorinière studied at the city’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts and then practiced open-air painting in the Campine (Kempen) and Ardennes regions. In 1853 he became one of the first Belgians to paint with the French artists in Barbizon. The solitary shepherd in the high fields, watching over his flock in the soft afternoon light, evokes a peaceful image of rural life in Belgium.

His alma mater in Antwerp appointed him professor in 1895, but had to abandon the post when his vision failed a few years later. Lamorinière received many honors, including membership in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and the Legion of Honor.

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Jean Pierre François Lamorinière (1828–1911)
Plaine a l’infini (Plain to Infinity), 1895

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

Low horizon and uniform sky hanging over the nearly flat plain impart an abstract quality to this painting. The large expanse of sky is defined with subtle tonal gradations. Moving from the foreground of flat heath, with a broad marsh in the middle ground, the misty haze in the distance makes the deep plain appear to stretch infinitely.

Charles Hack and the Hearn Family Trust Collection index

Frans van Leemputten (1850–1914)
Impressions de l’Escaut (Impressions on the Scheldt), 1884

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

The Scheldt River near Antwerp was a recurring site in the works of many Belgian artists, including the realist Frans van Leemputten.

Fellow artist Constantin Meunier had encouraged him to paint in the open air. In this painting, possibly a self-portrait, the artist, totally absorbed, sketches the view before him on a pad that the viewer barely sees. With the large figure and partial view of the boat dominating the scene, the picture’s cropping may reflect the influence of recent innovations in photography.

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Charles Mertens (1865–1919)
Parc à huîtres en Zélande (Oyster Park in Zeeland), n.d.

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

Trained in the Royal Academy in Antwerp, Mertens became an important representative of the Antwerp School around the turn of the century as a member of several artist groups: Als Ik Kan (The Best I Can), Cercle des XIII, and Kunst van Heden (Art of Today).

Here, in an overall gray-blue atmospheric tone, Mertens focuses on the cultivation of oysters in artificial beds along the coast of Zeeland. Leasing of cultivating beds from the government began in 1870 to counteract a collapse of natural oyster stocks. This shift from wild-caught bivalves to the farmed variety flourished, but put many traditional fishermen out of work.

Charles Hack and the Hearn Family Trust Collection index

Isidore Meyers (1836–1917)
Au bord de l’eau (At the Water’s Edge), n.d.

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

Meyers came under the influence of the French Barbizon painters in 1855. He adopted their practices of painting in the open air and of careful observation of nature and effects of light. Here he captures the coloristic subtleties of the sky and mirrored reflections in the water below. Two small figures stand on the shore, with a boat in dry dock behind them at right, and a small boat sails in at the left side of the canvas. His brush strokes follow the contours of the land and ships, while the water’s surface and distant trees are defined by parallel vertical strokes, creating an intricate surface texture.

Charles Hack and the Hearn Family Trust Collection index

Joseph Quinaux (1822–95)
Rivière (River), 1886

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

Quinaux taught at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels from 1876 until his death in 1895. His specialty was landscape, and among his pupils were Hippolyte Boulenger and Isidore Verheyden. He had spent much of the 1840s in the forest of Fontainebleau where he came into contact with painters of the Barbizon School. Often considered to be a bridge between the Romantics and the later realists, Quinaux had remarkable technical skills. Here he balances a smooth, luminous background and shady trees in the middle ground with bold touches of green for the waterlilies in the foreground. While these green strokes indicate lily pads floating on the pond, at the same time they sit flat on the surface of the canvas, creating tension between the two-dimensional surface of the canvas and the illusion of depth.

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Victor Uytterschaut (1847–1917)
Étang en hiver (Pond in Winter), n.d.

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

Uytterschaut’s watercolors were praised by his colleague Fernand Khnopff as “clever and sparkling,” a description that applies perfectly to this winter landscape. The fresh green below the bare trees signals the coming spring.

Uytterschaut studied technical drawing and landscape painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. He was a member of the realist artist association La Chrysalide and the Royal Society of Belgian Watercolorists.

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Théodore Verstraete (1850–1907)
La viellée (The Vigil), 1888

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

Verstraete studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, but he abandoned his academic training to paint directly from nature in the open air. Verstraete even built a mobile studio in order to paint landscapes on site. A founding member of dissident artist groups, Les XX in Brussels and the Cercle des XIII in Antwerp, he painted realist scenes of the rural poor. This darkly impressionistic landscape shows figures dressed in black trudging through the snow to keep vigil in a neighbor’s house. The delicate snowflakes contrast with the stolid figures in their dark clothing.

His fellow artist, Fernand Khnopff, writing in the Studio in 1897, suggested a spiritual dimension to these scenes of everyday life and the Belgian landscape: “Verstraete has treated landscape not from the colourist’s point of view alone. He has grasped and recorded the spirit of the soil in its subtlest aspects and in his most characteristic manner, and with all possible delicacy and intensity of feeling revealed the close connection between Man and the Earth he inhabits.”

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Guillaume Vogels (1836–96)
Barque à Trouville (Ship at Trouville), n.d.

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

This exquisite watercolor depicts a small fishing boat in the harbor at Trouville in France. The blue-trimmed vessel lists the side, as do other lightly sketched ships in the background—perhaps the aftermath of a coastal storm, or perhaps they are stranded when the tide ran out, causing them to tilt. Vogels’s technique is bold and sketchy, and he used an opaque white to accent the ships.

From humble origins, Vogels began as a decorative painter, but under the influence of the French Barbizon School he focused on landscape painting. One of the founding members of the avant-garde group Les XX in 1884, Vogels also joined its successor, La Libre Esthétique in 1893.

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Camille Wauters (1856–1919)
Coucher de soleil (Sunset), n.d.

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

Belgian landscape painters’ focus on the effects of light engendered local varieties of impressionism, and Wauters’s Sunset is a fine example. It exemplifies his mastery of subtle color and has all the freshness of a quick sketch executed on the spot, but with a solid composition.

Wauters received his first training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, studying with Ferdinand de Braekeleer (1792–1883), father of Henri. Wauters spent time at Barbizon and traveled extensively, from Scandinavia to Egypt.

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School of Tervuren

Rejecting the centralizing tendencies of nineteenth-century urbanism, many artists turned their attention to local terrain as a statement of independence. Less constrained by academic principles, they felt greater freedom to be innovative by painting landscapes.

The “School of Tervuren” was a group that painted in the forests and fields of a small village just east of Brussels. Influenced by the artists of the French Barbizon School, especially Jean-François Millet and Gustave Courbet, they devoted themselves to quiet scenes of the Belgian countryside. By 1863 they established a small artist colony in Tervuren. The Tervuren artists share a Romantic response to the region and to nature, and a commitment to a realist approach that faithfully records natural phenomena in a modern style. Above all, they viewed nature as offering an escape from the industrialization, burdens, and dizzying spectacle of the modern city.

The label “School of Tervuren” is not unproblematic; there was no formal organization of artists associated with it. Hippolyte Boulenger and fellow artists Théodore Fourmois, Joseph Coosemans met often at the inn Au Renard (In den Vos) on the market square of Tervuren, and Boulenger used the term for his entry at the 1866 Salon in Brussels.

Tervuren was only one of many groups of artists who gathered to paint landscapes in the second half of the nineteenth century. Locales such as Barbizon, Pont-Aven, and Giverny in France have become famous, along with Worpswede, Darmstadt, and Murnau in Germany and Skagen in Denmark. There are parallels with the Hudson River School in the United States. In Belgium clusters of artists were also found in Anseremme near Dinant, Verviers near Liège, Sint-Martens-Latem near Ghent, and Brasschaat and the Scheldt region near Antwerp.

Charles Hack and the Hearn Family Trust Collection index