Ambient Landscape By Dieudonné Jacobs (belgian-french, 1887-1867)

Impressionistic landscape by famous Belgian-French painter Dieudonné Jacobs (1887-1967), an impressionist painter from Liège who shared his life as an artist between the Belgian Ardennes and the Côte d'Azur and more specifically between Spa and La Garde (Toulon).

Literature: E. Benezit "Dictionary of painters, sculptors, decorators and etchers"(in French), Paris, 1999;


Inscription: signed lower right. 

Technique: oil on wood. Original period hand-crafted wooden frame.

Measurements: each unframed w 23 1/3” x h 15 1/2” (59,5 x 39,5 cm); framed w 27 1/8" x h 19 1/4” (69 x 49 cm)

Condition: in very good condition.

Coming from a modest family, he lived a rather sad childhood there in one of the countless workers' houses which, all similar and soulless, melted into grayness and boredom. Strange destinies are those of the three Jacobs sons (Joseph, Dieudonné and Isidore) whom nothing, at first glance, predestined to the arts and who nevertheless all three achieved fame, each in a well-defined discipline of the artistic universe. Dieudonné became a painter, his older brother, an actor and tragedian, and Isidore, the youngest, followed a glorious musical career which, very early on, led him to become a violin professor at the Toulon conservatory. Like most other impecunious teenagers, Dieudonné works as an apprentice for a decorator. His artistic dispositions being as obvious as his stubborn desire to embark on a very specific path, he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Liège. Ignoring his father's exhortations, he applied himself to follow, with exemplary assiduity, the courses of Adrien de Witte, Auguste Donnay and Évariste Carpentier. Working at night or early in the morning, and studying during the day, he had little time left for the leisure or amusements of his age. Unquestionably gifted in painting and having tenacity to spare, his studies continued smoothly and smoothly. In 1908, he obtained a first scholarship. The amount is intended to enable the scholarship holder to travel to Belgium. This trip is used to learn and broaden horizons. It is the same for a following scholarship. This allows him to stay in Paris. In Parisian museums, he discovered Monet and Impressionism.

From then on, his future seems determined. He sees himself peacefully installed, somewhere to the east or south of Liège, to pursue, in complete peace of mind, a carefully mapped out career, similar to that of the great contemporaries Richard Heintz, Ludovic Janssen, Joseph Bonvoisin, Emmanuel Meuris, Albert Raty, Camille Barthélemy... Fate, war, the vagaries of life decided otherwise.

On August 4, 1914, German troops invaded Belgium. Patriot, determined to put his bravery at the service of his country [ref. necessary], Dieudonné Jacobs, enrolled in the 14th line regiment, took part in the defense of Liège. Wounded, he is taken prisoner. Led to the rear, he escapes. Via the Dutch circuit, he reached England, then France and finally found himself at the front in this tiny portion of Belgium, behind the Yser, with his back to the sea. A weakened constitution did not allow him to withstand the ordeals for very long. moisture and water, in short the serious disadvantages of a war of positions in a land of trenches and mud. Exhausted, bronchitic, he is close to despair. Practically condemned by the doctors, he is reformed because of pulmonary tuberculosis. Since then, the chances of life have continued to come one after the other: having accepted the proposal of his younger brother, the one who teaches violin at the Toulon conservatory, he manages against all odds to regain his health in the Var. Barely recovered, he started painting again. The landscapes follow one another: Var coasts, Provençal skies, trees in the squall and above all the midday light which lets its palette speak.

He paints and remembers; even there, in the Var, he painted the Hautes Fagnes, these landscapes of mist that he continues to carry within him. Chance makes him meet his wife, violently struck at the corner of a street. From excuses to marriages, a fairly short period of time transforms the painter, single and silent, into an attentive husband. With his wife, he shares a bohemian life. Lacking everything except love, the couple puts everything together. Absences are less and less well accepted. Some are sometimes necessary, to satisfy one or another order, to go and paint on the motif. A scholarship holder from the Lambert Darchis Foundation, Dieudonné Jacobs settled in Rome for four years, discovering and copying the great masters: Caravaggio, Ribera, Tintoretto. Already, he is acquiring Vatican notoriety[ref. necessary]. He executes portraits and other commissions. The midday light inspires him. She encouraged him to paint pochades, then larger compositions.