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a painting of a group of people sitting around a tablea close up of a piece of brown paper on a table
Stanley’s Auction

86 - Joseph VERDEGEM (1897–1957)
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Estimate €500 - €800
Sale commission
Description
Joseph VERDEGEM (1897–1957) ‘Kantonnement’, oil on panel, signed and dated 1917 in the lower left-hand corner, approx. 30.5 x 41 cm. Note: This work belongs to one of the most distinctive and historically significant periods in Jos Verdegem’s career: the First World War. Having enlisted as a volunteer in the Belgian army, the artist joined the Belgian Army’s Art Section in 1916, which brought together several of the leading painters on the Belgian front, including Alfred Bastien, Léon Huygens, Fernand Allard l’Olivier and James Thiriar. Established to provide an artistic record of the Great War, the Art Section accompanied the army to the Yser front. Its artists depicted the devastated landscapes of Flanders, the trenches and the ruins, but also – far removed from any heroic vision of battle – the daily lives of the soldiers, their periods of waiting, rest and quartering. Entitled *Kantonnement*, this composition is entirely in keeping with that world. In it, Verdegem depicts a group of Belgian soldiers at rest, gathered in the confined space of a barracks and surrounded by their equipment. The proximity of the figures, intertwined with one another, lends the scene a particularly intimate and immediate quality. The simplified forms, vigorous linework and broad brushstrokes in muted tones already foreshadow certain artistic explorations that would later characterise his work and his place in Belgian modern art. Beyond its artistic merit, *Kantonnement* thus serves as a direct testimony to military life on the Yser front between 1914 and 1918, forming part of the distinctive body of work produced by the soldier-artists and painters of the Belgian Army’s Art Section. The subject finds a particularly significant parallel in another work by Verdegem entitled *Lampernisse-Kantonnement* (1917–1918), a watercolour and chalk drawing, which was exhibited at the Jos Verdegem retrospective at the Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Ghent in 1977 and reproduced in the monograph by R. H. Marijnissen and P. Huys devoted to the artist.
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About the sale DE SPILLIAERT AND DE SMET IN GABON, VIA CHINA Khnopff, Mortier, Picasso • Old Master paintings • Chinese bronzes and porcelain • Kota reliquary • Jewellery • Antique weapons
Auction location
Auction time 10/18/2026 at 2:00 PM
Pictures credits:
Hugo Sanchez
See original version (French)
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