A Landscape with a Mill

Gilsoul Victor was born on 10 September 10, 1867 in Brussels. Pupil at the Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp where he won his first prize in 1882. Famed master teachers and artist François Courtens and Louis Artan were his mentors. Debuted at the Brussels Salon in 1884. He also studied at the Academy of Brussels, where he won a prize (1885-1890).

He was an impressionist painter of landscapes, marines (harbour scenes), architectures, interiors, city and canal views, portraits and figures. He was also a watercolourist.

He was member of the group ‘Voorwaerts’ in 1891. He was awarded a silver medal at the Paris World Fair (1900). In 1900, King Léopold II commissioned several compositions for his yacht “Alberta”. Sojourned from 1911 in Paris and also worked for some time in Brittany. Was teacher at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Antwerp (1924-1930). He was member and honorary member of La Gravure Originale Belge (1928). Knighted in the Order of Leopold. He had several exhibitions in France.

Works on the Belgian coast in Brabant, the Netherlands and France, where he often painted the Versailles region. In Belgium, he painted chiefly landscapes around Bruges, Ieper, Diksmuide, Nieuwpoort, attracted as he was by the mirroring waters of the North Sea, the many canals in that region and the warm, glowing colours. He also liked nocturnal faces by moonlight. He influenced a large number of painters, such as Charles Le Bon.

Before 1900, his palette was dark and heavy, but under the influence of open-air painting, it became progressively brighter. His gloomy palette slowly matured around 1900. About this time, his art changed from being sombre. It became luminous and its colour more distinguished.

His paintings can be found in important public and private collections worldwide, in Brussels (Musée Charlier, Musée des Beaux-Arts), Elsene, Namur, Mons, Luxembourg, Ostend, Diksmuide, Antwerp Musem of Fine Arts, Bruges Museum of Fine Arts, Leuven, Paris (Petit Palais), Barcelona, Bucharest, Dordrecht, Krefeld and Saint-Josse-ten-Noode.

In Brussels Museum: “November Evening in Dordrecht” and “Becalmed in the Channel”. There is a quite a big oil painting of “Stormy Weather in Nieuwpoort” in Antwerp Museum. In Bruges Museum: “Farriers Gate, Bruges” (1905). In Brussels Town Hall: “The Three Fountains Canal”.

“No doubt V. Gilsoul is, in general, too exclusively a painter to add his soul to nature”, remarked Sander Pierron in 1904. “He is a lyricist, not an elegist”.

Literature:

W.G. FLIPPO, ‘Lexicon of the Belgian Romantic painters’, Antwerp 1981.