Lacemaker

023550   Firmin BAES  [1874 - 1945] Lacemaker, 1913 
pastel on cardboard lied on canvas, 78,2 x 85,4 cm, signed l.l.: "Firmin Baes"

Firmin BAES [1874 – 1943] was a Belgian painter of an artistic descent – his father was Henri Baes. Firmin studied in the Leon Frédéric’s atelier at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels.   He painted genres scenes, portraits, nudes and landscapes mostly in a pastel technique. Since  1898 he was a member of an artistic group called Pour l’art. Between 1899-1900 he worked with his father on the interior decoration of the Hotel Continental in Brussels. Baes exhibited his work regularly. In 1900 he received the First Award on the Paris World’s Fair, and in 1904 third place on the Exhibition in St. Louis in the USA. During his lifetime the artist gained a commercial success. “The Pastel Virtuoso”, as he was called, had an excellent skill in meeting customers’ expectations and could easily satisfy their taste, by painting large scale academic pictures, with a sophisticated gradation of colours. An information found in the artist’s notes stated that he sold 1340 paintings to the private collectors, with 212 portraits and 265 still lifes among them. Presently Baes’ oil paintings and pastel works are in collections of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Brussels and Antwerp, Greoningemuseum in Bruges, Kunstmuseum ann Zee in Ostend, Stedelijk Museum in Kortrijk, Musée des Beaux-Arts in Charleroi.