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Willem Paerels
1878 – 1962
View of Amsterdam Harbour
Oil on canvas, signed
21 x 22 inches canvas size
26.5 x 27.5 inches framed size
Willem Paerels first began painting while working as an apprentice his father’s workshop. At 16 he left his native Delft to study painting in Brussels and later he took Belgian nationality. In order to support his painting career he worked as a designer of furniture and ornaments for garments.
From around 1900 Paerels began to visit Paris in order to study impressionist works, which became a major source of inspiration for him. From this time onwards he devoted himself entirely to painting, isolating himself in his studio on the outskirts of Brussels for days at a time while he mastered the perfect rendering of light.
The present work was executed during this short but productive period, during which Paerels’ palette brightened and his colours became more transparent. It was during this time that Paerels produced many of his best works.
Paerels first exhibited his work in 1902, by this time he had begun to embrace a fauvist style, employing purer colours and a more vivid palette. These works were not a critical success, however, the art collector François van Haelen supported Paerels financially buying several paintings from him.
Between 1908 and 1909 Paerels produced many highly decorative interior-paintings. He also started to employ a birds-eye perspective, and enhanced the contrasts between the colours applying them in a flat manner. As a member of the so-called “Brabant Fauvists” he was supported by the art dealer Georges Giroux and exhibited at his gallery from 1914 onwards
Paerels was forced to remain in his native Netherlands throughout the First World War. During this time he opened his own studio where he began teaching younger painters. The work that Paerels produced immediately after the end of the war is characterised by a darker and more sombre palette, and his compositions began to be influenced by the Constructivists. The following decades his life were largely spent teaching and travelling, from 1942 to 1955 Paerels taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Louvain and once again Paerels embraced a bright, light impressionist style of painting.
Museums:
- Antwerp
- Brussels
- Gemeentemuseum, The Hague
- Boymans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam
