Valerius de Saedeleer artwork • painting • previously for sale A Valley in Wales

Valerius de Saedeleer was one of the painters who settled in the village of Sint-Martens-Latem on the Leie in the period 1898-1904. Together with Georges Minne, Gustave van de Woestijne and Albert Servaes, he was part of the so-called first group of Sint-Martens-Latem. Guided by a deep sense of nature and connection with the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, he came to paint wide, open landscape panoramas in summer and winter with a finely tuned care of composition and execution. The impressionist work he made before that destroyed the painter. Not the ephemeral and sensory, but eternal values, symbolized in the character of the Flemish country, became the essence of his work. It made De Saedeleer famous far beyond the Belgian borders.