VAN DEN EECKHOUDT, Jean
Facts about this piece
BELGIAN 1875-1946
ARBRE DEVANT LA MER A ROQUEBRUNE
OIL ON CANVAS, SIGNED
24" X 29 1/2"
Excellent
Author Bio
Dating to 1916, the most significant period of the artist’s life, this view near the town of Roquebrune can be considered amongst the artist’s most important works. A pure Fauvist painting, Van den Eeckhoudt shows his fluid technique to the fore. Jean van den Eeckhoudt was born in Brussels in 1875. He studied art under the guidance of his uncle, the painter Isidor Verheyden and took additional lessons with the portrait painter Ernest Blanc-Garin whilst still in his teens. In 1893 he met the painter Henri Evenepoel and the two would become lifelong friends. In 1895 he started showing his work with the artistic circle known as ‘La Libre Esthetique’, a group founded the previous year by a number of important artists including Ferdinand Khnopff and James Ensor. These exhibitions are now considered the most influential of all the movements in Belgian Art of the early Twentieth Century.From 1905 he regularly traveled to the Midi area of France and the town of Roquebrune where he would spend most of his summers and the entire duration of World War One. From 1914 to 1918 he developed a style and it was at this time that he first commenced painting in the manner of the Fauves. By 1920 he was well established within the Belgian art community and had become a close friend of the French painter Henri Matisse whose influence on his later work was to be profound.
Jean van den Eeckhoudt died in the small French town of Bourgeois in 1946. He is now considered one of the most important Belgian painters of the early Twentieth Century and his work can be seen in museums throughout Belgium.