Léon Frédéric

Léon Frédéric painted with a detail and clarity that looks back to the early Flemish masters, but his subjects are Symbolist: allegories of night, the seasons and nature, sometimes crowded with children and flowers, alongside sober scenes of rural poverty.

He was born in Brussels in 1856, studied at the Brussels Academy and with Jean-François Portaels, and toured Italy in 1878 and 1879. He won gold medals at the Paris Expositions Universelles of 1889 and 1900 and was made a baron in 1929. His triptychs The Chalk Sellers and The Stream are among his major works, and his paintings are in the Musée d’Orsay and the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. He died in 1940.

Allegory of the Night shows his dreamlike, finely detailed side.