Albert Jozef Claeys - Landscape with a view of the church tower

A beautiful and large canvas by Albert Claeys, landscape with a view of the church tower. Signed.

Very nicely framed in a classic gold-colored frame with linen band. In very good condition.

Total dimensions; 107 x 107 cm.

Albert Jozef Claeys was a Belgian painter born in 1889 in Eke and died in 1967 in Deinze.
After training at the Sint-Lucas in Ghent, Albert Claeys perfected himself at the Ghent Academy of Fine Arts. He specialized in the decorative and monumental arts, in the class of the sculptor Felix Metdepenningen. The example of the Frenchman Pierre Puvis de Chavannes especially intrigued him.
Thanks to the same Metdepenningen, Claeys received a grant to study his French example closely. At the Ghent academy he also had a master teacher in George Minne. Fellow students at the academy were Evarist De Buck and Albert Saverys. As an artist he only came out in 1920 with an individual exhibition in the 'Salle Taets' in Ghent. The success of the first exhibition prompted the gallery owner to organize an exhibition of his work the following year. During these years he was also active in the local 'Cercle Artistique et Litéraire'. Exhibitions in Brussels would follow afterwards. Claeys gradually came to be considered one of the leading modern Belgian artists. This became apparent in November 1924 when he took part in the famous exhibition of 'La Jeune Peinture Belge' in Paris. Like Valerius De Saedeleer, Claeys moved to the Flemish Ardennes in the interbellum. In 1925 he found a place in Mullem, a picturesque village in the hills around Oudenaarde. In Mullem Claeys no longer limited himself to the landscape, but he began to focus on interiors, church views and portraits. In his landscapes the emphasis was no longer on the panoramic overview. He increasingly paid attention to what was happening in the landscape. It was not until 1932 that Claeys came to live in Sint-Martens-Latem. Latem gradually became the place to be for the beau monde of Ghent who had a country estate there or who strolled there at the weekend. However, Claeys painted a village of imagination, and completely ignored the tourist success. In the later thirties he became a welcome guest at the Ghent gallery 'Vyncke-van Eyck'. Gradually his work was also spread across the museums of Antwerp, Ghent, Liège and Leuven. Claeys' last major individual exhibition was held in the Brussels 'Galerie de la Madeleine' in 1964.
Claeys' work had matured when he settled in Deurle in 1932. The artist developed a stereotypical landscape in which the Leie always dominated.
He built a jetty at his house so that he could paint on the water with his boat. In this way, the local Leie landscape was captured on canvas in idyllic dream images by his last Latem representative.