John Bennett Fine Paintings
London, England, UK

CELOS, Julien

JULIEN CELOS
1884 - 1953
Belgian School

Piccadilly Circus

Oil on canvas, signed

39.5 x 53.7 cms
15½ x 21 1/8 inches

Julien Célos was born in Antwerp in1884 and studied art at L`Académie d`Anvers under the tutelage of the landscape painter Franz Courtens. He became a member of the art societies La Gravure Originale Belge and Als Ik Kan.

His best known subject matter is the old towns and cities of Belgium and Holland, capturing the designs and patterns of the architecture on canvas with titles such as “The old small Corner”, “The Quay at Lier” and “Market in Malines” and his work is redolent of Albert Baertsoen 1866 – 1922.

Although principally a painter in oils, Célos also executed a number of important colour etchings showing picturesque views of Flemish towns. He exhibited at L’Exhibition de Bruxelles in 1910 and at Le Salon des Artistes Français in 1912. He travelled to England avoiding the conflict in Flanders during the First World War and held an exhibition of forty-five works at the Goupil Gallery in 1915. The Goupil Gallery was formed in the mid 1880s and was initially in Regent Street but moved to New Bond Street where it remained until its destruction by a bomb in 1941. Its purpose was to promote new artists both from Britain and the Continent and was the first home of the London Group formed in 1914. Artists who showed there were some of the most illustrious from the art world at that time and include such names such as Walter Sickert, James Whistler, George Clausen, William Orpen, Philip Wilson Steer, David Bomberg, Walter Greaves and Augustus John.

Bibliography: Arto Dictionnaire Biographique Arts Plastiques en Belgique
Dictionnaire des Peintres – E Benezit
Dictionary of British Painters 1880 – 1940 – Johnson and Greutzner