Framed Oil Painting on Panel by Yvette Lichtfus (1925-2014) 'Forest Landscape'

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Yvette Lichtfus's "At the Edge of the Woods" captures the moment a shaded forest path opens toward the light. Tall … Read more Yvette Lichtfus's "At the Edge of the Woods" captures the moment a shaded forest path opens toward the light. Tall trees rise in deep, layered greens, their canopy broken by flickers of sun, as a lone herder walks his cattle along a sandy track toward a luminous clearing veiled in morning haze. Lichtfus applied the paint in quick, broken strokes on panel, which keeps the fresh immediacy of a scene painted outdoors. The glow at the heart of the composition draws the eye deep into the woodland and gives the scene real depth and stillness.
The forest interior has held a cherished place in Belgian painting since the 19th century. Artists left their studios for the beech groves of the Sonian Forest and the wooded valleys of the Ardennes to paint light as it truly fell through the leaves. In their hands a path into the woods became a passage into reverie, a place where country life and nature move at the same gentle pace. Lichtfus carried that romance into the 20th century with her own luminous touch.
Born in Arlon in 1925, Yvette Lichtfus found her vocation in 1940. While sheltering from a bombardment in Brussels, she met the Antwerp painter Prosper De Wit, whom she called her master for the rest of her life. He taught her to paint with the palette knife and introduced her to the painters of the Grimbergen group. She went on to study at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels under Henri Van Haelen, Aimé Oscar Stevens and Alfred Bastien, graduating with high distinction. She held her first Brussels exhibition in 1949. Lichtfus chose never to join a movement, saying she feared losing her freedom, and her work stands close in spirit to Belgian Luminism and the Impressionist tradition. Forest views and the landscapes of the Semois, Flanders, Brabant and Brittany became her great subjects, and she painted without interruption for seventy years. She received a gold medal at the Haute Académie de Lutèce in Paris in 1969, and a catalogue raisonné of her work was published in 2013. In 2025 the Rouge Cloître art center in Brussels marked her centenary with a retrospective exhibition.
The painting is presented in a richly carved Louis XV style frame with a softly worn gilt finish and a linen liner. It brings a breath of the countryside to a library, a study, or a wall above a Country French commode.
Circa late 1900s
Measures 17.5H x 20.5W x 2.5D
Available at Inessa Stewart's Antiques, Dallas Design District, Dallas, Texas. See less