Background
Gustave de Smet was born on January 21, 1877 in Gand, Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium. His father, Jules, was a set decorator and photographer. His brother, the artist Leon De Smet, was born in 1881.
Gustave de Smet was born on January 21, 1877 in Gand, Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium. His father, Jules, was a set decorator and photographer. His brother, the artist Leon De Smet, was born in 1881.
Between 1889 and 1897, the young man was given the opportunity to attend school at the Academy for the Fine Arts of his native city. Gustave was considered to be an indifferent student.
De Smet became familiar with the painting profession via the house-painting atelier of his father. In the 1890s, Gustave was involved with the decoration of the exterior of the Spitzner museum, a famous fairground attraction of the time. In these early years, he worked to earn a living, a living provided by the bourgeoisie.
The debut of Gustave De Smet was undeniably romantic-realistic in nature. He produced among others the immense wall panels for the Nenuphar Inn in Afsnee-a stone’s throw from Sint-Martens-Latem-in this style. The artists had no contact with the village for the time being. De Smet gradually came under the influence of impressionism. An epigone of Emile Claus, however, he was not. Already in these luminist works, he sought expression and structure.
Around 1906, he became friends with Frits Van den Berghe and Constant Permeke in the Ghent working-class district of Patershol. These friendships would last for life. At the beginning of July 1908, he settled in Sint-Martens-Latem with wife and child. De Smet had worked in the region already in 1906, and he was undeniably lured to the village by his Ghent friends. Earlier the same year he had worked with Permeke in the harbor area of Ostend. He primarily spent his time in Sint-Martens-Latem; the young impressionist was a regular resident of the village until 1912.
In August 1914, the De Smet family fled to the Netherlands, in the company of Frits Van den Berghe. The confrontation with modern art in Amsterdam quickly brought about his affiliation with the international avant-garde and specifically with expressionism. Together with Van den Berghe, he lived in Amsterdam and then in Blaricum.
De Smet blossomed only during the war years. He had become familiar with international modernism already before the First World War, among others via the exhibitions at the Galerie Georges Giroux in Brussels. But modernism made its effects known in De Smet’s artistic work only after 1915. Suddenly he was exclusively interested in the essence of things. He made frank emotion and free expression his central themes.
Around 1920, he perfected this ordering. The color palette was fuller, richer in contrast. De Smet began to think more in terms of composition, and under the influence of theécole de Paris-with post-cubists such as André Lhote and Léopold Survage-he strove for more order and balance. Important in this was the Latin orientation of the gallery and the periodical Sélection, projects with which De Smet was closely involved.
De Smet returned to Belgium only in 1922, where he lived for a time with Permeke. His following residences were in Bachte-Maria-Leerne and Afsnee. Especially Villa Malpertuis, the country house of Paul-Gustave van Hecke in Afsnee, met with his approval. In 1929 - 1930, he finally had a villa built on Pontstraat in Deurle, a house that he would be forced to sell in the crisis years.
When his most important source of income, the Galerie Le Centaure, went bankrupt in 1932, 10 years of history were squandered in a few days time. The gallery’s collection was auctioned off without limit. With Hubert Malfait and Frits Van den Berghe, De Smet was among the worst affected. No less than one hundred and five top works by De Smet were auctioned for a trifle. In fact, the conservative press used the economic crisis and the bankruptcy of the modernistic galleries to announce the end of expressionism, the prevailing movement of the 1920s.
In 1936, Gustave settled in a simple house in Deurle, the present Gust. It was there that he died on October 8, 1943.
Vondelpark
La jupe rayée
Naked woman with flower bouquet
Girl with blue scarf
Le Jardinier
The port of Ostend
The Beguine Convent in Bruges
Harbour Under Snow
Jardin a Sint-Martens-Latem
Landscape
Three Flowers in a Vase
Village
The port of Ostend
Torse de femme
Mowing woman
Hollandse vissers; De maaier (Boyens 506; 515)
L'artiste et sa femme
Arbres
Landschap met Stromijt
La vie du ferme
Landscape with Farmhouses
Hoofd Van Een Jonge Vrouw
Flowers
Bloemen Onder Glazen Stolp
Potato harvest
Landscape
Leading Cows to the Stall
Nude by a window
The young captain
Zomer te Latem
Barnyard with Herd
The Man with the Bottle
Nu couché
View of a village with a boat
A windmill in a landscape, Het Gooi
The port of Ostend
De Haven
Grazing Cow
Girl with a pink ribbon
Haystacks
Le couple au village
De Wiedster
The ripe cornfield
A view of Blaricum
Dark snow
La femme au rosier
Ghent, a View of the Coupure
Quotations: “What my work in general concerns is my endeavors to express everything as well as possible, not to imitate a piece of nature, but to create almost a synthesis of each painting. For this, first of all, a strong structure is required: simple and constructive, no minor details, retaining the essential aspects of everything.”
Gustave married Augusta van Hoorebeke on February 19, 1898; their son Firmin would later die in a train accident during the First World War.
