Huisje bij boomrand en vrouwen met visnetten 1872 - 1944

Frans Smissaert made this painting of a house by a treeline and women with fishing nets with oil on canvas. The moody colour palette really sets the tone for me. Look at the sky, the way that Smissaert has loaded the paint to create that heavy cloud cover. You can feel the weight of it, it’s so expressive. The marks are built up, layer after layer, like the experience of the landscape accumulating over time. I really love the mark-making in the trees. Look at the way that the trunks are rendered, each a single stroke of dark paint. The sparseness of the marks somehow conveys the fullness of the scene. The feeling reminds me of some of Courbet's landscape paintings. Like him, Smissaert finds a way to suggest a lot, with what appears to be very little. Ultimately, it's up to us to project onto the canvas.