“Place du Tertre, Montmartre” Paul Mathieu

Beautiful luminist view of Place du Tertre, Montmartre in Paris. Oil on canvas signed and dated 1919. Free and spontaneous touch, light colour palette. A fine work for the artist.

Size: H 62cm x W 80cm – H 75cm x W 95 cm

Belgian School.

This view is very similar to the painting illustrated in the monography of the artist “Paul Mathieu, Collection Berko, p 143.”

Lit: Paul Mathieu, born in St. Josse-ten-Noode (Brussels) in 1872, was a Belgian landscape painter. At 12, he enters the drawing school in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode and with J. Meyer. From 1896 onwards, he abandoned still life painting to devote himself to landscape painting and was a late representative of Impressionism. He taught at the Brussels Academy from 1896 to 1932 and was a founding member of the Sillon in 1893. Mathieu appreciated the pearly light and refined colours and worked in the Kempen, on the Belgian coast and stayed in Paris during the First World War, he also painted the canals of Burano (Venice). With Alfred Bastien he crossed the Congo to create a panorama (115m) for the Ghent World Fair (1913, now lost). He died in Ostend in 1932.

Paul Mathieu was a near contemporary of the Impressionist Masters and his oeuvre represents a celebration of Nature. His canvases are painted freely and spontaneously, seeking to catch the charm of certain fleeting moments in Nature. His exquisite sense of colour, the feeling of freshness and tranquility emanating from these paintings justify his position among the foremost Belgian landscape artists in the early 20th century.

Mathieu’s oeuvre became characterized by an individuality and uniqueness of style, raising him above numerous landscapists only following the earlier Masters. He soon earned the nick name “King of the Skies”.  Paul Mathieu has consistently used a small touch with a knife, whose upper relief catches the light.

Work in the Ixelles Museum