A Clear View

Whitford and Hughes.

The position of the Belgian Luminist tradition in the shifting, bubbling mass of avant-garde art is quite clear and central. Belgian artists have known how to absorb the good of the new without losing the best of the older tradition. (Frank Rutter, Belgian Art in Exile, London, 1916, p.15).

'Luminism was the term applied to Belgian Impressionism, largely due to the group Vie et Lumière which formed around Emile Claus (1904). This term acknowledges the special quality of the nation's light-infused, Impressionist canvases, particularly the landscapes that depict, again and again, the Flemish countryside around the River Lys. More than this, it pays homage to the centuries-old Flemish tradition of light which showed its continued importance to the diverse artists of the modern age.

Sarah Polden