A sandy track in summer, Brabant

Jan Sluijters visited the popular artist's village Heeze in Brabant several times between 1908 and 1910 from his home village Laren to paint en plein air. He knew this area well, as he was born in 's-Hertogenbosch and had visited the countryside various times. This resulted in a series of paintings between 1909 and 1910 depicting pastures, farms, blooming orchards and forest lanes near the rural villages Heeze en Leende. His luminist paintings from this period are made in a palette of predominantly blue-green and purple colours, like is visible in the present lot. The thin poplars along this country road are typical for this area and at the horizon an East Brabant village looms up. Various landscape paintings with forest lanes where made in this scenery. These paintings can be seen as his most spontaneous works, as he makes himself free from the influence of the French Impressionists and Vincent van Gogh. His focus is more on the two-dimensional, rather than a realistic depiction of his surroundings and has developed into a mature painterly style.

This new way of painting may well be influenced by his private life. Sluijters just separated from his wife Bertha Langerhorst and had fallen in love with Greet van Cooten. His passionate painting from this period would therefore have been an outlet for him. It is in this context that he calls his work 'art as a result of intense feeling'. Not everybody could appreciate the passionate art of Sluijters at that time, which was seen as quite controversial. People did not appreciate his vibrant use of colours. And the writer Frederik van Eeden even thought Sluijters had gone mad (like Van Gogh), after he had seen his paintings at an exhibition.

To be included in the Catalogue Raisonné on the artist's work,
currently being prepared by the Netherlands Institute for Art History
(RKD) in The Hague.