Louis Dubois 1830-1880 Still Life With Cherries, Painting, Circa 1870, Former Hulin De Loo Collection

Louis DUBOIS
Brussels, 1830 – Schaerbeek, 1880
Still life with cherries
Painting, oil on canvas
Signed lower right
Painting: 26.4 x 38 cm
Beautiful 19th century frame: 47.5 x 59.5 cm
Very good condition, old relining
Circa 1870
Numerous exhibition labels on the back as well as a customs stamp in Pau
History: Hulin de Loo Collection (art historian specializing in Flemish primitives and curator of the Ghent museum)
Important painting exhibited in the following exhibitions:
- Exhibition, Galerie Georges Giroux, 1932
- Exhibition of the masters of the Société libre des Beaux-Arts (1867), Brussels, November 12 – December 4, 1932
- Brussels Exhibition 1935, Five centuries of Art 1400-1900 (as part of the Universal Exhibition)

Louis Dubois was trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels and then followed the teaching of Thomas Couture in Paris. From 1868, he founded and led the Société libre des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, in reaction against official painting. Spokesman for bourgeois and urban realism in Belgium, he was a fervent follower of the "New School". As a realist, he did not hesitate to adopt theoretical positions, among other places in the journal Art Libre where he became Courbet's defender under the pseudonym Hout. It is this realist imprint that we find in our still life with cherries which evokes Courbet's still life paintings.
Louis Dubois' paintings are kept in the museums of Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent, Tournai and Saint-Josse-Ten-Noode.

The former owner of the painting whose name is mentioned on the back of the painting is Georges Hulin de Loo (1862-1945), art historian, professor of art history and curator of the Ghent Museum. He worked on the Flemish primitives and contributed to enriching the Belgian collections with important works by buying them and then reselling them to Belgian museums at cost price. The sale of his collection in 1947 showed that he also liked to surround himself with more contemporary works of art such as those of Louis Dubois or Foujita.