Hut in the Suisse Alpes (Alpe di Ronco)
| Prijs: On request |
| Schilder: Peter van den Braken |
| Afmetingen: 78 x 71, listed, quality of the work is good, auctioned by Sotheby |
| Signature: left under, dated dated 1930 |
| Technichs: Oil on board |
Description
Just like the Alps in the distance in this work, Peter van de Braken reaches a peak in his artistic oeuvre here. This early work stands out for its bold use of color and form. In this work, made in Switzerland, we recognize all Brabant elements such as the hut, the plants, strong colors, firm shapes, pasty use of paint and the marked lines.
Van den Braken has become courageous early in his life due to his frequent stays abroad. He dared to confront his ideas with the cross-border modernist art idea that was then gaining popularity. This work, with depth through sparkling colors, leans strongly towards Fauvism. The symmetrical shapes of the mountains, the hut and the road, they intertwine through colorful shapes with a lot of movement. Reality, painted in accentuated, penetrating areas of color, together one great solidary whole. That’s consistency through “hut-like mountains” and a “mountainous hut.” Both attached to each other. Put together and formed with great conviction. And then the road at the front, beautifully worked out in leaf shape and perfectly in line with the composition in terms of figure, direction and surface division.
Biography
Peter van den Braken was born in 1896 in Eindhoven as the son of Poulus Catharina (Pauw) van den Braken (1868-1963) and Maria Elisabeth Cecilia van Bakel (1894-1980). He was the childhood friend of Antoon Coolen, who also became nationally mainly as a regional novelist of Brabant life. Van den Braken was an admirer of Vincent van Gogh. In the painting village of Heeze, the painter Jan Kruysen was his teacher and he had contact with his son Antoon Kruysen. Van den Braken lived in many places and traveled a lot. He ran away from home early. And already at the age of twelve he decided to leave Brabant to travel the world with his painting supplies. But his heart and soul was and remained Brabant. In his younger years he worked in Brussels, Maastricht, Nijmegen, Amsterdam, Kortenhoef, Paris, London and Rome. Early in life he also worked in Switzerland, France and Portugal. Later some time in Finland, Norway, North America. in Canada (Montreal and Toronto), Palm Beach in Florida and in Mexico City. He mainly made landscapes and still lifes, based on his memory and sketches. But first and foremost he was and remained, in the footsteps of Jan Kruysen and his son Antoon, the painter par excellence of the beautiful Brabant landscape with its typical farms