Landscape with farm

A low farmhouse sits in the middle of wet Flemish fields, its thatch patched with moss and its roof tiles a faded brick red. The best part is the bottom third of the canvas: a flooded strip of pasture holds the building upside down in blurry streaks of white, green and rust. Nearby a rough wooden fence leans, a small haystack rises on the right, and a thin young tree waves a few leaves against a sky full of scrubbed-in clouds. The paint is thick and hurried in places, the kind of brushwork done outdoors while the light was still cooperating.

Valerius de Saedeleer (1867 to 1941) was a Belgian painter who settled at Sint-Martens-Latem, a village on the Lys river that drew a whole colony of artists looking for simple rural subjects. This canvas belongs to his earlier, looser phase, when he worked in an impressionist manner learned from teachers like Franz Courtens. Later he changed course completely, turning to still, flattened winter landscapes inspired by Bruegel that made his reputation. Seen against those famous snow scenes, this farm is a humbler thing, more sketch than statement, but it shows what he was looking at before he found his style: ordinary buildings, standing water, and weather moving across a flat country.