Master Art

This very large landscape is a fine example of Firmin Baes’s meticulous pastel technique. As Jean Marchal wrote of the artist, ‘The pastels of Firmin Baes reach the highest heights of virtuosity. Finesse, grace, elegance, even refinement, these are the goals that in still life and landscape as well as in genre subjects, the artist’s dazzling talent undoubtedly achieves.’ Pure pastel landscapes such as this are, however, fairly rare in the artist’s oeuvre.

A large group of similar landscape paintings by Baes, albeit executed not in pastel but in oil on canvas, were presented by the artist’s granddaughter to the Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1985.