Gustave Vanaise

Joshy Hotel, Brussels

Sale: Sotheby's, New York, 21 May 1987, lot 298

Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

Ghent, The Fédération Artistique, 1895

Belgian painter Gustave Vanaise first studied painting in his hometown of Ghent before completing his training in Brussels and becoming one of the founding members of Les XX, a group of twenty Belgian painters, designers, and sculptors formed in 1883 by the lawyer, publisher, and entrepreneur Octave Maus. Influenced by Flemish and later by Dutch art, following a visit to the Low Countries in early 1878, but also by contemporaries such as Jan Van Beers, Vanaise moved to Paris in August 1878 where he spent two years and started exhibiting large history paintings at the Salon. Painted in 1895, Vanaise's monumental Salome debuted in Ghent at The Fédération Artistique's exhibition that year.