Renée Kempen - Harbor with boats

Harbor view oil on panel. Signed lower right Kempen.
Kempen studied at the Academy and the Higher Institute in Antwerp under the guidance of Albert and Carlo De Roover, R. Wante, V. Thonet and Samuel De Vriendt, among others. She created figures, landscapes, city, harbour and river views, church interiors, flowers and still lifes. With a tempered passion she painted alternately melancholic and lively canvases. She had a dynamic, graceful and nervous style. From the press: “RK does not impose any restrictions on herself in terms of subjects. Indeed, both the human figure observed in its daily activities, as well as the landscape in her own region or elsewhere, even abroad, the village view and the suburb, the winter with its serenity, the harbour, the still life and the animal undergo a special transfiguration in this art, giving them a specific signature. This work is about a sonorous and atmospheric expression inherent to things, but transposed via the dynamic personality of the artist who wants to speak her own language.” (RDC) She is mentioned in BAS II and Two centuries of signatures of Belgian artists. (Piron)