Jules de Sutter artwork • painting • previously for sale Portrait of Gustave de Smet

The Belgian painter Jules de Sutter has become known as an expressionist painter of the Flemish countryside. Raised in a poor working-class family, he attended evening classes at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent during the First World War. Initially he painted in an impressionist and Fauvist style, but in the 1920s he was influenced by the expressionists Fritz van den Bergh and Gustave de Smet. De Sutter's paintings, however, were distinguished by the contrasting colours. In the second half of the 1920s, De Sutter's fame rose and his work was regularly featured in modernist magazines. In the late 1930s he settled in the artists' village of Sint-Martens-Latem, where he co-founded a post-expressionist artists' group. Official recognition came in 1944 when De Sutter was appointed teacher at the Ghent academy.