La Sambre en hiver by Pierre Paulus
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La Sambre en hiver 1940

Pierre Paulus

Mixed techniques
80 ⨯ 100 cm
Currently unavailable via Gallerease

  • About the artwork
    Signed bottom left
  • About the artist

    Pierre Paulus, later Baron Pierre Paulus de Châtelet, was a Belgian expressionist painter. He is best-known as the designer of the "bold rooster", adopted on 3 July 1913 as the symbol of the Walloon Movement and today the flag of Wallonia. 

    Born in a family with many artists, the Belgian painter Piere Paulus studied architecture at the Academy of Brussels to meet the wishes of his parents. However, once he graduated and got his degree, he turned to his passion that is painting.

    He was already very talented at a young age of only 15 years old. Only at the age of 25, the Belgian painter became the well-known painter of coal mines and factories, miners and metallurgists, slag heaps, blast furnaces, heavy barges loaded with coal on the Sambre and industrial landscapes. He loved to paint these industrial landscapes under a clear sky or a rainy sky, covered with snow or illuminated by the red glow of the forges. During World War 1 he took refuge in London. The London atmosphere enriched his registration for pictorial. 

    Art Style

    Pierre Paulus was an expressionist painter, pastellist, engraver and lithographer, sporadic poster artist. Due to the initiative of Jules Destrée, he was revealed to the general public during the famous exhibition on Walloon Art organised in Charleroi, in 1911. Pierre Paulus was regarded as the successor of Constantin Meunier. Paulus truly expresses the concept of Black Country of which he became the cantor.

    Works 

    Beside the works of social character, he painted animals, delicate flowers or still lifes. His paintings can be characterised by the realistic and anecdotal appearance, as well as the dark colours. It starts from a local reality and remains attached to the scenery in which it lived, but it expresses a general truth, reflected the human condition and the often inhuman framework of a social class. He decorated the University of Labor and the People's Palace in Charleroi.

    Paulus gained notability during the Walloon Art Exposition of Charleroi in 1911 and, in the interwar period, he held several exhibitions in Europe and the United States.

    Source