Georges Hippolyte Dilly - Canal In Bruges - Oil On Canvas

Georges Hippolyte DILLY (Lille, 1874 - Châtel-Guyon, 1941)
Canal in Bruges
Oil on canvas
54x65 cm / 68x79 cm framed
Signed lower right "Georges. H. Dilly"
Relined, restorations
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This canal view is characteristic of the work of Georges Hippolyte Dilly, a painter originally from Lille who, after starting his career as a portrait painter, produced genre scenes located in Flanders. The work on light is particularly advanced here, notably in the treatment of the cloudy sky and its reflections on the water of the canal, where the facades decorated with stepped gables, characteristic of Flemish buildings, shimmer. Small characters, scattered on the quay on the left and on the bridge, help to enliven the scene and embody daily life in Flanders at the turn of the century.
His works have often been compared to those of the Belgian symbolist poets Émile Verhaeren or Georges Rodenbach. Thus, for Émile Anglade, "Georges Dilly understood perfectly the melancholy, the peaceful charm, the originality of this country that nature has not endowed with its splendors, but which exerts a sort of mysterious attraction on our soul, by its sky and its very special atmosphere. He walks us through small silent and sleepy streets, stops in front of groups of gossips, the last remnants of those days of yesteryear, which our ancestors knew, or else, he leads us to the edge of a canal with languid waves, which reflect, between the pot-bellied streams, the clouds of the sky, ²the canal with dreamy waters² said Verhaeren. »[1]

[1] Émile Anglade, « Georges Dilly », Artistes de mon temps, Paris, Éditions « Le Point », 1929, p. 109-110.