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Jean-Michel CELS
The Hague, 1819 - Brussels, 1894
Oil on canvas
30.5 x 37.5 cm (42.5 x 35 cm with the frame)
Signed and dated lower left "JM Cels / 1843
19th century frame in wood and gilded stucco
In the 1840's, Jean-Michel Cels, a Belgian painter, painted landscapes and studies of natural elements such as trees, trunks and magnificent studies of skies preserved in the National Gallery of London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He exhibited at the Brussels and Paris Salons (notably in 1850 a "Landscape of Brabant").
Before going to Italy in 1847 and exhibiting at the Salon, Cels studied with Pierre-Jean Hellemans, a Belgian landscape master.
Our painting, dated 1843, is from this period and is marked by the style of his master in its naturalism. But the remarkable rendering of the atmosphere and the sky, as well as a particularly advanced naturalism especially in the description of the plants in the foreground is already the mark of this great master of landscape that will become Jean-Michel Cels and that we rediscovered recently thanks to the exhibition organized in early 2018 at the gallery La Nouvelle Athènes in Paris.
Ref: QI9FG48OBC