Molse School

also: School of Mol

school genre c. 1890-1930 Belgium Netherlands

The Molse School ('School of Mol') is the name given to the loose international circle of painters who gathered around the municipality of Mol in the Belgian Campine at the turn of the twentieth century. Its anchor was the Dutch-born Jakob Smits, who settled in the hamlet of Achterbos and drew other painters to the region's heath, white sand flats, and farms. Taking the Barbizon School as its model, Mol organized an international exhibition in 1907 that brought 68 artists and 212 works to the town; word of the landscape spread through the participants' studios and colleagues kept coming. The group never formed a society and had no single style - what unites its output is the plein-air depiction of the rustic Kempen countryside and its farming life in a quiet, subdued register. Dirk Baksteen's etchings gave the colony a graphic reputation as well.

nl:Jakob Smits , schilderij Het Gehucht, museum Jakob Smits te Mol, Belgie, olieverf/doek 105 x 100 cmPublic domain (credit: Jacob Smits, Dutch Painter, 1855-1928) · source

Defining characteristics

Rustic Campine subjects: farmsteads, heathland, and white sand flats around Mol
Painted en plein air, recording the light and weather of the northern landscape
A quiet, subdued mood and sober palette - Baksteen was called the 'stylist of silence'
Farmers and village life treated as the subject itself, not as picturesque staffage
A parallel graphic output: fine etchings of the same Kempen motifs

Key figures

Jakob Smits (1855-1928) — Dutch-born painter settled in Mol whose Campine landscapes and religious scenes anchored the school
Dirk Baksteen (1886-1971) — Belgian painter-etcher trained by Smits, the 'etcher of the Kempen' with some 300 etchings

Example works

Het Gehucht (The Hamlet) — Jakob Smits (n.d.)
Old Houses on a Sunny Afternoon — Paul Mathieu (n.d.)
Along the River — Willem Battaille (n.d.)

Sources

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