Provenance:

Galerie Brueghel, Brussels, May 1943; Collection of Mr Van der Elst, Brussels (according to labels au verso); Private Collection, France

Description:

Binche is in the Belgian province of Hainault and it was here that Louis Buisseret was encouraged to pursue his love of painting and drawing by his parents. He began his studies at the Académie in Mons together with Emile Motte and Louis Joseph Greuse, before completing his training at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in the studio of Jean Delville, the Symbolist painter. He was awarded a number of prizes but notably that of the Belgian Prix de Rome in 1910 for painting, followed by that of printmaking the next year.

Buisseret travelled to Italy and his time spent there was to create a deep impression. He was particularly influenced by the frescoes he saw in Rome and Florence, which affected not only his subject matter but also palette.

During the First World War he concentrated mostly on portraiture. He married Emilie Empain in 1922 and she was often a model for his work. He also exhibited in the US,  notably at the Carnegie Institute in 1926, where his work was met with some acclaim. Cleveland and Chicago were also to fall under his artistic spell. Then in 1928, following a rejection of his work by the Salon of La Louviere, he helped to found the Nervia group of artists, a group formed to encourage and nurture young Walloon artists in a more realistic style of painting than other local schools. One year later he was appointed director of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Mons, a post he kept until 1949. He was also the recipient of a silver medal in 1929 at the Salon of Barcelona, which has resulted in one of his masterpieces, ‘The Bath’ being in the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, as well as in many Belgian institutional collections.

The ‘Water Carrier’ is a classic example of the pathos and dignity that Buisseret gives to his subjects, be it in a formal portrait or in a study of an everyday genre type. His use too of a sort of pastel palette must have come from his close studies of Italian Renaissance frescoes. Much of the background architecture in his painting is also reminiscent of the arcades and buildings in early Renaissance painting. His painting of 1941, Jeune fille aux fruits from the Belgian Art sale at Christie’s, 12th October 1999, lot 163 is the perfect example of this.