Beach Hut on a Sunny Day – Plage La Panne

Frans Smeers (Brussels, 28 January 1873 – Brussels, 1 June 1960) was a Belgian painter whose work occupies an important place within Belgian post-Impressionism. He painted a wide variety of subjects, including genre scenes, portraits, landscapes, still lifes, beach scenes, harbours, and marine views, always with a refined sensitivity to light and atmosphere.

After initially training as a decorative painter, Smeers enrolled at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where he studied under Jan Portaels and Joseph Stallaert. His earliest works were rooted in a realist tradition, but around 1900 his style evolved toward a more luminist and post-Impressionist approach, characterised by a brighter palette and a growing emphasis on light and mood. In 1893, he co-founded the artists’ group Le Sillon together with figures such as Jef Lambeaux and Alfred Bastien. He also designed the posters for the sixth and seventh Salons of Le Sillon in 1899 and 1900. In addition, Smeers was a member of the Cercle Artistique d’Auderghem, a smaller but active artistic association in Brussels.

Like many artists of his generation, Smeers spent the years of the First World War abroad, living for a time in London and in the Netherlands. In 1933, he was appointed professor at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where he taught until 1946. Among his pupils were Germaine Chardon, Fernand Christophe, Jean-Pierre De Martelaere, George Lambillotte, Gilberte Thomas, Médard Siegfried Tytgat, and Maurice Wyckaert, confirming his role as an influential teacher for a younger generation of Belgian artists.

Smeers lived and worked mainly in Brussels. Around 1908 he resided on the Chaussée de Boondael, and from approximately 1936 he lived on Rue Veydt in Saint-Gilles. During his career, he exhibited regularly in Belgium, including in Ostend in 1908 at the Centre d’Art, at Galerie Georges Giroux in Brussels in 1912, at the Cercle Artistique et Littéraire in 1920 and 1924, at Galerie Mommen in 1924, and at the 72nd exhibition of the Société Royale Belge des Aquarellistes in Brussels in 1936, where he presented a work entitled Flowers.

Today, works by Frans Smeers are held in major public collections, including the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, the Ixelles Museum in Brussels, the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, the collection of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives in Brussels, as well as public collections in The Hague. His painting Singing Girl is preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, and The Black Velvet Dress (1944) forms part of the collection of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives. Through his versatile oeuvre and his role as an educator, Frans Smeers remains a respected figure in Belgian art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.