Jean Louis Minne "river In The Woods" Oil On Canvas 55x70

Jean Louis MINNE (1876 - 1951)
Oil on canvas 55x70 cm "River in the woods" around 1930
Signed lower right
Jean-Louis Minne was born in Saint-Gilles (Brussels) in September 1876 in a large family where he is the only boy. His father is a cabinetmaker. Very young he showed himself gifted for drawing. He attended evening classes at the Academy of Saint-Gilles, where he obtained the Silver Medal in 1905, and gold in 1907. However, he did not dwell on the exclusive representation of the human figure ( favorite subject of these courses), but soon launches into a passionate study of the landscape: not the one that is elaborated in the sometimes dismal clarity of the workshops of the time, but the one that changes and lives according to the variations of the light, from moonlight to the vivid radiance of the sun, passing through all the varying nuances of the daily and seasonal cycle. He made study trips to Italy, France and Germany. Naturally attracted by visiting prestigious museums, he nonetheless hides his disappointment: "I could not stay long in these dark rooms or churches, I was so drawn to the light" he writes in Italy. His research on light and colors led him to the development, with the collaboration of physicists interested in the question, of a personal theory that he would exhibit, along with his paintings, in the Studio room in April 1919. From 1906, he took part in some major collective exhibitions: the Triennales of Namur, Liège, Antwerp, the Cercle Artistique in Brussels, the Salon of Tunis (1912 and 1914). Personal exhibitions continued regularly from 1910. The first was held at the Cercle Artistique du Waux-Hall in Brussels. Jean-Louis Minne travels the Brabant countryside. He stops near farms, sketches or paints the peasants at work, the ragged children, the domestic animals and of course, the landscapes. But it is above all the Forest that inspires him: he wants to restore sometimes the harmony, the rhythm and the monumentality, sometimes the wild thrill: he becomes “the Cantor” of the Forest, as Sander Pierron will describe it in his ” History of the Sonian Forest ”. It expresses the subtle emotions of the misty or sunny streets, colored according to the seasons, or of the heart of the high forests whose ground is encumbered with inextricable vegetation. The artist in Uccle It is undoubtedly his love for the Forest that drives him to leave Saint-Gilles to settle in a small house in Fort-Jaco. Around 1920, recently married, he lived in an apartment in Chaussée de Waterloo, in Vert-Chasseur. In 1923 his son José was born. But his young wife died a few days after giving birth. He had just started building his house on Avenue Victor Emmanuel III in Vivier d'Oie. Another strategic place on the edge of his dear Forest ... It is in this house that he lived the rest of his life, until his death in June 1951. A Retrospective of his work was presented in Brussels, Galerie Lautrec in 1956. The Municipality of Uccle paid homage to him at the Cultural Center in 1962.
Biblio: Wikipedia ...
Period golded frame