Jakob Smits, Evening in the Kempen

by Atelier Liesjes

A village street in the Kempen, late in the evening. High in a pale green sky hangs a small, white moon; the light is so faint that the houses stand out against it merely as dark blocks. On the right is a row of low houses with red-tiled roofs and whitewashed walls; on the left, a broad façade looms, with a deep shadow beneath it. Between the houses stand heavy trees, almost black, with the occasional tuft of green foliage. On the sandy track, a couple are walking towards the viewer: the woman wearing a white bonnet and a dark shawl, the man in a long coat, both faceless. The road itself is a broad strip of ochre-yellow sand, with long shadows creeping towards the foreground. On the left, a second dwelling can be seen, with a narrow façade and a dark opening. Smits does not paint the Kempen as an idyll but as a region of sparse light and heavy soil. The brushwork is broad and impasto-like, the colours subdued: grey-green, umber, reddish-brown and a single ivory-white accent on the bonnet. The evening atmosphere, the solitude of the figures and the almost symbolist use of moonlight place the work between realism and symbolism, in the tradition of Millet and the Tervuren school. Here, the moonlight is not a romantic effect but a means of silencing the forms. Jakob Smits (Rotterdam 1855 – Achterbos near Mol 1928) settled in the Kempen in 1888 and became the central figure of the Mol School. He painted farmers, interiors and landscapes using a thick palette knife and was admired by Henry van de Velde and the young Flemish Expressionists. His work is on display at the Jakob Smits Museum in Mol and is considered part of Flemish art from around 1900. A sombre, tranquil piece for a rural interior.