Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1849 Sint-Eloois-Vijve, Belgium

Died: 1924 Astene, Belgium

Year of Migration to the UK: 1916

Other name/s: Emile Claus

Biography

Painter Émile Claus was born on 27 September 1849 in the small village of Sint-Eloois-Vijve, West Flanders, Belgium. Though initially discouraged by his father, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp (1869–74). In 1883 he moved to Astene, where his countryside home by a riverbank allowed him to take advantage of the en plein air painting technique popular with artists of the late nineteenth century. Claus travelled frequently to Algeria, Morocco, New Zealand, Spain, and France. In the latter, he was exposed to the work of Impressionist artists, specifically Claude Monet. Though the two never met, Claus was inspired to imitate Monet’s applications of colour and light. In 1904 Claus co-founded Vie et Lumière, an artists’ group which would lend its name to the Luminist movement of the early twentieth century which combined Impressionism and pointillism to create a particular feeling of light within landscape painting. Among the co-founders was the painter Jenny Montigny, a former pupil of Claus. Although he was already married and many years her senior, they began a relationship which lasted until his death in 1924. Claus was considered to be one of the foremost Belgian Luminist painters, enjoying critical and commercial success during his lifetime, and his circle of colleagues included Auguste Rodin, Émile Zola, and Maurice Maeterlinck. His work was shown internationally in the Pastel Society Exhibition at the Royal Institute, London (1901 and 1903) and in 1915 he contributed the painting La Récolte des Pommes [Apple Picking] to the War Relief Exhibition, Belgian Section in Aid of Belgian Artists held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

In 1916 Claus fled to England to escape the carnage of the First World War. After a short stay in Rhiwbina, Wales he returned to London where he would remain until the end of the conflict. He became a member of the Royal Academy of Arts and, settled in a corner house at the bottom of Norfolk Street, he painted (from the small turret of his improvised studio) a collection of studies of the River Thames, known as Reflections on the Thames, which were exhibited at the Goupil Gallery in 1917. The series comprised 58 views of the Thames under different weather and light conditions - its banks in the sunshine and in fog, in calm weather, and in a strong wind, under a covering of snow, and in the golden glow of a summer sunset. The exhibition was well received and the Observer noted: 'All this is observed and translated into terms of paint, with keen appreciation of atmospheric subtleties of tone. M. Claus is no longer a close follower of Claude Monet’s divisionism. Indeed, he is not tied to any particular technical method, and adopts the manner best suited to each subject, sometime aiming for vibration, sometime for broad effects (The Observer 1917, p. 5). Illustrations of his paintings were included, alongside those of other Belgian refugee artists, in A Book of Belgium's Gratitude (1916), comprising literary articles by representative Belgians and published 'with the aim of expressing their gratitude to the English nation'. An exhibition of the paintings illustrated in the book was held at the Knoedler Galleries in New York in 1916.

In 1918 Claus returned to his home in Astene, where he lived and painted until the end of his life. Emile Claus died in Astene, Belgium on 14 June 1924. In the same year, a portrait of Claus by Laura Anning Bell was shown in her solo exhibition at the Fine Art Gallery in London. A retrospective of Claus' paintings was held in Brussels in 1921. In 1927 his painting Boys Sliding was featured in the Exhibition of Flemish and Belgian Art 1300-1900 held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Almost a century later, his work was included in the touring exhibition Belgian War Exiles, held at the National Museum and Gallery in Cardiff, the Museum voor Schone Künsten in Ghent, and the Hannema De Steurs Fundatie in Heino in south east Holland in 2002, commemorating Belgian artists who lived and worked in Wales during the First World War. Claus' work is represented in several UK public collections: a number of lithographs are held by the British Museum, London, and his painting Poultry in a Wood, a prime example of the luminist technique, is held in the Touchstones Rochdale Museum, Manchester.

Related books

Martin Hopkinson, Belgian Prints in Britain During World War I, Print Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 4 (December 2016), pp. 415-426
Constantin Ekonomides, Émile Claus 1849–1924 (Bibliothèque de l’Image, 2013)
Oliver Fairclough, Robert Hooze and Catherine Verdickt ed., Art in Exile: Flanders, Wales and the First World War (Pandora, 2002)
Johan de Smet and Willy van den Bussche, Émile Claus 1849-1924 (Snoeck-Ducaju & Zoon, 1997)
Emile Cammaerts, 'The Magic of the River', Country Life, 8 June 1918, pp. 528-529
Emile Cammaerts, 'Emile Claus', Country Life, Vol. 41, 2 June 1917, pp. 551-552
'Emile Claus's Thames Pictures', The Observer, 27 May 1917, p. 5
A Book of Belgium's Gratitude. Comprising Literary Articles by Representative Belgians, Together with Their Translations by Various Hands, and Illustrated Throughout in Colour and Black and White by Belgian Artists (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head / New York: John Lane Company / Toronto: S. B. Gundy, 1916)
Camille Lemonnier, Émile Claus (G. van Oest, 1908)
'Art Exhibitions', The Times, 16 June 1903, p. 14
'The Pastel Society', The Times, 17 June 1901, p. 9
Pol de Mont, 'Emile Claus the Painter of the Leieland', Artist: an Illustrated Monthly Record of Arts, Crafts and Industries, Vol. 25, May 1899, pp. 169-181

Public collections

Related organisations

Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp (student)
Royal Academy of Arts, London (member)
Vie et Lumière (co-founder)

Selected exhibitions

Belgian War Exiles, touring exhibition, National Museum and Gallery, Cardiff, Wales, Museum voor Schone Künsten, Ghent, Belgium, and Hannema De Steurs Fundatie, Heino, The Netherlands (2002)
Exhibition of Flemish and Belgian Art 1300-1900, Royal Academy of Arts, London (1927)
The Fine Art Gallery, London (1924)
Retrospective exhibition, Brussels (1921)
Emile Claus, Goupil Gallery (1917)
Knoedler Galleries, New York (1916)
War Relief Exhibition, Belgian Section in Aid of Belgian Artists, Royal Academy of Arts (1915)
Pastel Society Exhibition, Royal Institute, London (1903, 1901)
Salon de Paris (1882)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Émile Claus]