Emile Claus

Acquired by the family of the present owners before 1974; thence by descent

Ghent, Museum voor Schone Kunsten/Musée des Beaux-Arts, Retrospective Emile Claus, 1974, no. 20 (with incorrect illustration)

Henry Marcel, in La Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1910, pp. 321-322, discussed & illustrated

The painting is in good condition and ready to hang. The canvas has not been lined, and there are three small patches visible on the reverse. There is a fine apparently stable pattern of hairline craquelure, primarily along the upper edge and in the water to the left and right of the children. Ultraviolet light reveals a very small circa 1.5 x 2cm repair in the boat, a small circa 3 x 2cm area in the water just above it (patched on the reverse) and a thin circa 2cm line of restoration in the grass below the children. Under ultraviolet light some areas fluoresce blue-green, however this appears to relate to the artist's pigments or varnish rather than corresponding to retouching. The painting is presented in a decorative gilt frame.
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Painted in 1883, Le Bateau qui passe is among the first works in which Claus explores fully the artistic possibilities of the river Lys (or Leie), just months after the artist had set up his house and studio on the banks of the river. All the main compositional elements are instantly recognisable: the meandering river, serried ranks of distant poplar trees, and poetic observation of light and atmosphere characterise the artist's most celebrated works. With the foreground bank acting as a compositional repoussoir, the viewer follows the tenderly-depicted children's gaze from youthful play nearby to the men's herculean labour beyond, while across the flat countryside lie distant trees shrouded in mist.

Following breakthrough success at the Antwerp Salon of 1882 with his large-format Le Combat de coqs, Claus bought the house on the Lys outside Deinze which would become the legendary Villa Zonneschijn, and although he would keep his Antwerp studio until 1890, he would remain there for the rest of his life. The present work bears comparison to a contemporary work by William Stott of Oldham titled Le Passeur, and both owe something to the influential Naturalism of Jules Bastien-Lepage, however the composition represents a successful and distinctively fresh and personal approach to the subject. This composition culminates most memorably in Claus' Le Pique-nique, in which local country folk gaze on at a Belle Époque lunch party separated by the river (fig. 1).

Another version of the present work, with four children instead of three, is in a private collection.