The Mount Of Olives (1904), Orientalism, Oil On Panel Signed By Louis Gustave Cambier

Louis Gustave CAMBIER (1874-1949). Le Mont Olivier (circa 1900-1910), superb oil on panel, signed in the lower left corner, countersigned and dated on the back. Dimensions: Support and subject: 31.5 x 40 cm. Painter of portraits, landscapes, still lifes and genre scenes, also a sculptor and engraver, Louis-Gustave Cambier was born on June 13, 1874 in Schaerbeek. He attended the classes of artists Jean-François Portaels, Joseph Jaquet and Louis-Eugène Simonis at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. His first compositions present sterile gestures, and particularly those that come from the school and academic environment. Then comes life, with its shocks, its revelations and this elementary expression of the mind and the senses gradually takes the form of language. The human figure did not attract Cambier at the beginning; it did not impose itself on him because he still only saw its external features. It was landscapes that interested him: the only place he knew how to read and understand, the one where the soul could unfold, which should not be defined, which only required abandonment, love, and prayer. He sought solitary nature and preferred it severe and desolate. In 1898, Cambier became a founding member of the L'Essor and Le Labeur circles. It was at the Le Labeur circle's exhibitions that he showed one of his most characteristic paintings from this period: Les Millénaires. These are the harsh Mosan rocks overlooking the smooth, bluish water of the river; enormous, metallic masses, a sort of curved giants, crouching, and as if crushed by the fatality of time. Without knowing it, Cambier was already painting portraits. He seeks to render the appearance of a physiognomy, he seeks a kind of resemblance, a moral rather than physical meaning, a harmony superior to that of the ordinary landscape: the harmony of character and personality. Reading a book by Pierre Loti is a revelation for the painter; it introduces him to the Orient. Cambier travels to Palestine, Asia Minor, and Constantinople, passing through Italy and Greece. For ten years, he devoted himself to capturing the aspects of these disturbing regions on canvas. In addition to landscapes, he produced numerous religious scenes in the style of altarpieces or church interiors. It was then in Paris, at the Académie Ranson, under the guidance of masters such as Maurice Denis, Roussel, and Paul Signac, that the painter came into contact with the major currents of contemporary painting stemming from Impressionism. Upon his return to Belgium, his style became more realistic. In 1906, he became a member of the Société des Artistes français and received an honorable mention at the Salon.