Paris - Bonhams Cornette de Saint Cyr will offer a selection of exceptional Belgian paintings from long-established collections in the Impressionist and Modern Art sale on Wednesday 4 June 2025. These six paintings will be exceptionally exhibited at Maison Hannon in Brussels on 14 & 15 May 2025 and in Amsterdam on 21 & 22 May 2025.

Bénédicte van Campen, Bonhams' Senior International Specialist, said: "Bonhams will offer at auction in June in Paris two important collections of works brought together with passionate care by families in Belgium during the 20th century. These groups of works gathered by two long-established families belong to the great tradition of Belgian collections created in the period between the two World Wars. It reveals the love of a generation of intellectuals and industrialists for Belgian Art embodied by Léon Spilliaert, Emile Claus or Gustave Van De Woestyne.

These collectors were above all enthusiasts and did not settle for simply buying artworks but were also close friends with many of the artists they collected, exactly as Edouard and Marie Hannon were. It is a privilege to be exhibiting at Maison Hannon on 14 and 15 May.

Following the major 2020 Léon Spilliaert retrospectives at Musée d'Orsay in Paris and Royal Academy of Arts in London, works by the artist predating 1910 are highly sought after. Together with fellow citizen of Ostend James Ensor, Léon Spilliaert is considered one of the pioneers of Belgian modern art. Works by the artist, who was manifestly influenced by Munch, describe an even more obsessive attempt to capture a similar psychodrama on paper. The artist's landscapes, seascapes and self-portraits from the 1900s are testaments of his lonely night walks and experiments in the hallucinatory effects of physical exhaustion and psychological isolation. His drawings on paper are sinister in their blankness. Three of them will be exhibited at Maison Hannon before the auction in Paris in June.

Marine met weerspiegeling; Seascape with Reflections, work on paper executed in 1907 is a rare drawing exhibited in all the major exhibitions of the artist from 1965 in Antwerp to the last one in 2025 in The Hague (estimate: €100,000 – 150,000)
Witte doos, flacon, schelpen en boeken; White Box, Bottle, Shells and Books, is a delicate pastel on paper executed in 1904 (estimate: €60,000 – 80,000)
Hekken rond het "Royal Palace Hôtel", Troonstraat, Oostende; Fence around the « Royal Palace Hotel », Ostend, work on paper, 1909 (estimate: €50,000 – 70,000)

As Belgium celebrated the 100th anniversary of the death of the Impressionist Belgian painter, Émile Claus, the finest paintings from all periods of his oeuvre were exhibited in Deinze (Belgium) from September 2024 to January 2025. From a Belgian private collection, The Reaper at rest by Émile Claus (1849 –1924)is an oil on canvas painted on 10 September 1905 (estimate: €100,000 –150,000)

Another rare and iconic painting by Gustave Van De Woestyne (1881 –1947) is Boerenkop from 1911 (estimate: €80,000 –120,000). The artist belonged to the so-called "First Group of Latem", a group of artists who worked in the rural village of Sint-Martens-Latem on the banks of the Lys, near Ghent. He was the brother of the Flemish poet Karel Van de Woestyne. He is famous for his portraits of peasants.
Gustave Van de Woestyne's Boerenkop is a striking study of expression depicting a peasant. Although Van de Woestyne was known to paint his friends and family, he also frequently depicted typologies drawn from his memories and imagination. Boerenkop might be a character conjured from Van de Woestyne's mind.

Other highlights of the sale include:

Quai à Veere by Théo Van Rysselberghe (1862-1926), oil on canvas painted in 1906 (estimate: €180,000 – 250,000). The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Olivier Bertrand. This work will be included in the forthcoming Théo Van Rysselberghe catalogue raisonné, currently being prepared by Olivier Bertrand.