The River Meuse at Anseremme

The most original Belgian landscape painter of the years 1860-1870 is undoubtedly Hippolyte Boulenger (1837-1874). In the mid-1860s, he came to the fore with a type of landscape that was new to Belgium, impetuously painted, heavily covered in paint and unfinished. The tormented painter seeks refuge in an intense experience of nature. He has a predilection for exceptional weather conditions, such as storms, which still connects him to Romanticism. Depending on his mood, his work ranges from serene, realistic paintings to dramatic compositions that herald expressionism. At the Brussels Salon of 1866, Boulenger jokingly introduced the name 'school of Tervuren' by analogy with the Barbizon school. In this small village in the wooded area south-east of Brussels, Boulenger and several other landscape painters, such as Alphonse Asselberghs and Théodore Baron, often retreated to paint directly from nature.