Oil on panel - Belgian school from the beginning of the 20th century, 'The country of Buta (Congo)'

BELGIAN school from the first half of the 20th century
Sunset in the land of Buta (Congo)
1938
oil on panel
17x24cm; 33 x 40 cm
illegible signature lower right - on the back, inscribed 'The country of Buta / 1938'; framer's label in Brussels
under glass, in a Montparnasse setting
 

Bibliography: Guisset Jacqueline et al. The Congo and Belgian art: 1880-1960. Tournai: The Renaissance of the Book, 2003. Print.
 

The painting we are offering you was produced in 1938, in the ‘land of Buta’, in the Congo. First governed as a separate possession by Leopold II between 1887 and 1908, the king then donated the country to Belgium, transforming it into a colony, the “Belgian Congo”. The country retained this status until its accession to independence on June 30, 1960. 

It was with the International Exhibition in Brussels in 1897 that the Belgian public first became familiar with the Congo. An important colonial section, located in Tervuren, in the Palais des Colonies (today the Royal Museum for Central Africa) was then dedicated to the country. The goal is then to promote the opinion of the people about colonization. Many Western artists such as Herbert Ward and Arsène Matton, among others, take on African subjects and pay homage to the beauty of black men. 
It was then from 1920 that Africanist painters became explorers of the “Black Continent”; their works often having a quasi-scientific scope. This fact can be explained by the immense popular success experienced by the two colonial exhibitions in Marseille in 1906 and 1922, which pushed many artists to take an interest in it. In Belgium, Fernand Allard l’Olivier (1883-1933) became the emblematic figure of this movement; the artist offers a rewarding and somewhat artificial image of a dreamed and heroic Congo. His works, very decorative, feature indigenous figures with sculptural bodies in large, often imagined spaces.
The work presented to you is part of a much more realistic movement. As the sun sets and offers the sky a warmth with golden tones, the dark silhouette of the trees stands out with an effect of powerful contrasts. Nature, silent and devoid of all human life, falls asleep in poetic calm.

 

Ref: KHI2LD8R3W