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Paintings and drawings, from 16th to 19th century
Gustave FLASSCHOEN
(Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, 1868 – Brussels, 1940)
Travelers’ Rest in the Algerian Mountains
Circa 1889
Oil on canvas, 44.5 × 25.5 cm
Signed lower left.
Provenance:
Private collection, Belgium
Private collection, France
A Belgian painter, draftsman, and illustrator, Gustave Flasschoen trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Molenbeek under François Stroobant. A traveling artist, he developed a varied body of work, ranging from Flemish landscapes to Orientalist scenes, in a style gradually characterized by great freedom of brushwork and an Impressionist sensibility.
North Africa occupies a unique place in his career. As early as 1889, when he was only twenty-one years old, Flasschoen likely discovered Algeria, as evidenced in particular by a watercolor depicting Laghouat, dated to that year. Fascinated by the landscapes and nomadic peoples of the Algerian High Plateaus, he made several trips to the Maghreb, even going so far as to share in the nomadic lifestyle of its inhabitants for a time. In 1930, he dedicated an exhibition in Antwerp to his travels, featuring paintings from Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.
Our painting may have been created around 1889, during this first trip to Algeria. Its spontaneous, almost sketchy quality suggests it is a quick sketch made from life. A small group of travelers, accompanied by their mounts, has stopped on a rocky promontory at the foot of imposing mountains, whose dark silhouettes stand out against a cloud-laden sky.
The artist captures the scene with remarkable economy of means. The figures, simply suggested by a few thick, luminous brushstrokes, contrast with the broad, brownish masses of the landscape. The energetic impasto of the clothing and rocks, set against the more blended treatment of the mountains and sky, lend this small composition a distinctive presence and intensity. More than just an Orientalist scene composed in the studio, it possesses the freshness of an impression captured directly during a journey.
Gustave Flasschoen’s work is represented in several Belgian public collections, notably at the Ixelles Museum, the Royal Museum of the Army and Military History, and the Museum of the City of Brussels, as well as in the Royal Library of Belgium and the Museum Vleeshuis in Antwerp.
Flasschoen’s high-quality Orientalist works remain relatively obscure on the market, although certain significant compositions have achieved remarkable results. For example, his large canvas The Falcon Hunt, from the Patrick Guerrand-Hermès collection, sold for €34,350 at Sotheby’s in Paris on October 9, 2012 (lot 50).
With its free-flowing brushwork, dramatic atmosphere, and possible early date, this painting offers a particularly captivating account of this Belgian traveling painter’s discovery of North Africa.
