Hippolyte Boulenger – Valley of Josaphat in Schaerbeek, 1868

by Atelier Liesjes

A shallow stream winds its way from the foreground into the distance through a green valley, so still that the bare treetops are reflected darkly in the water. On the left stand two trees with widely spreading crowns and delicate, almost sketched branches; on the right, a group of tall, slender trunks rises up, their foliage extending right to the top of the canvas. Halfway between the trees, a low house with a red tiled roof appears, and further to the left, a dark mass of buildings stands out against the horizon. The banks are overgrown with tufts of grass, reeds and scrub, interspersed here and there by a muddy path. Above the valley stretches a vast sky of ivory white and soft turquoise, with thin streaks of cloud drifting off to the right. Boulenger painted this valley with the loose, swift brushstrokes of someone working outdoors. The paint is applied in short strokes: sage green and moss green in the meadows, umber and reddish-brown in the shade, ochre yellow in the unfurling leaves, all subdued by a cool, damp light. The style is realism in the tradition of the Tervuren School, akin to the Barbizon School: not an idealised landscape, but a place the painter knew and which he captured time and again. The bare trees and the pale sky lend the scene the feel of early spring, the moment when the countryside has yet to awaken. Hippolyte Boulenger (Tournai 1837 – Brussels 1874) settled in Tervuren and made the surrounding landscape his subject. He admired Corot and the French landscape painters and preferred to work en plein air, building up his canvases in a single session. His early death at the age of thirty-six made him the most talked-about representative of the Tervuren School. A subdued, green landscape that brings tranquillity to a classical interior.