Oil on canvas

Signed lower right

Size: 38 x 56cm

With frame: 57 x 74 cm.

Frantz Charlet represents a family occupied with the pleasure of horse riding on the beach. Animals, horses, a dog, a few human figures, the child, the parents, speed, breaking waves and racing: everything is there for the painter to experiment with the representation of movement.

The painting almost breathes the sea air. One wonders if it was the wind from the sea that lifted the painter's hand when he was painting, so much the material shows dynamism and liveliness.

The painter is premature, he starts at fifteen in Ghent, exhibits a still life and sells it. He took lessons from Jean-François Portaëls in Brussels, left for Paris and joined the studio of Léon Gérôme, Jules Lefebvre and Carolus-Duran from 1880 to 1882. A friend of Théo van Rysselberghe, he undertook with him a long journey through Spain and North Africa. He goes through Nice, a merchant buys all his studies from him.

He joined Brussels in 1883 and founded the Groupe des XX with Ensor and van Rysselberghe. The movement continues with Free Aesthetics. In 1908, he exhibited his paintings in Paris, at the George Petit gallery. Critics hail his painting of landscapes as well as interior scenes. Follower one day of Seurat, weary of the laws of optics the next day, he nevertheless undertakes research on light vibrations and resonances centered on the ratio of tones, until his forms seem modeled only by the only color.