Léon Frédéric (1856-1940) Dune Landscape, Oil On Canvas, Signed

Léon Frédéric (1856-1940)
The Dunes and the Sea,
signed at the lower right
Oil on canvas transfered on woodpanel
30 x 40 cm
Framed : 42 x 53 cm
in good condition,
Léon Frédéric always presented his oil landscapes on canvas transferred onto mahogany panels like this one.

This seascape and dunes by Léon Frédéric is part of a series of landscapes inspired by the shores of Heyst, near the Belgian coastal resort of Knokke.
Although he found much inspiration in the rolling landscapes of the Ardennes, particularly in the area of Nafraiture, at the other end of the country, the North Sea offered him a completely different motif and an opportunity to explore another source of inspiration. His style may seem lighter in some ways, but the same energy is evident in the way he depicts the vegetation in the foreground, for example, with the dunes reminiscent of the hills and valleys he loved. Similarly, his approach to composition is characteristic of his art, with a very high horizon line that seems to raise the viewer's gaze. Finally, this work exudes a great serenity that invites contemplation.

Léon Frédéric was born on 26 August 1856 in Brussels and died on 25 January 1940 in Schaerbeek.
The son of a prosperous jeweller, Léon Frédéric was apprenticed to the painter-decorator Charle-Albert in 1871, and attended evening classes at the Brussels Academy. In 1874, he worked in the private studio of Jean-François Portaels. The following year, he joined forces with a group of young painters to rent a studio where they could study live models. From 1876 to 1878, he prepared for the Prix de Rome, which he failed, but his father offered him a year's travel to Italy. From 1878 to 1879, he made his debut with the artistic group l'Essor, which brought together proponents of realism. In 1883, he was hailed as a promising painter with his painting Les Marchands de craie, a triptych combining modernism with the genius of the primitive masters, and in the 1890s he became one of the most popular painters in Belgium, cited alongside Constantin Meunier and Eugène Laermans.
On 24 April 1929, King Albert I awarded Léon Frédéric - at the same time as James Ensor - the title of Baron.

In 1882, he discovered the work of the French naturalist painter Jules Bastien Lepage at the Brussels Salon.
Some of his paintings took the form of esoteric allegories, such as Intérieur d'atelier (1882), in the Musée d'Ixelles. These works suffice to classify Léon Frédéric as one of the masters of the Belgian Symbolist movement. They foreshadow certain Surrealist themes, as shown by the right-hand side of the triptych L'Eau, L'Eau dormante.
His large triptych, Les Ages de l'Ouvrier, exhibited at the Musée d'Orsay, is also very famous.

But his smaller-format landscapes - including an impressive series of views of Nafraiture in the Belgian Ardennes and his views of dunes on the Belgian coast - reveal a body of work that is just as bold, but more intimate in nature, that of a contemplative landscape lover.
He favoured high horizons, with the sky reduced to the upper third of these canvases, expressing the point of view of a painter who voluntarily allows himself to be dominated by the force of the natural spectacle that fascinates him.

His works are held by the Musée d'Orsay, the Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts de Belgique and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, among others.