15.02.1919–04.07.2006
Frans Claerhout
Frans Claerhout (1919–2006) left West Flanders for South Africa as a Catholic missionary at twenty-seven and stayed there until his death. A self-taught painter who worked in his spare time, he filled his canvases with donkeys, sunflowers and people from around his mission near Bloemfontein. He exhibited in South Africa, Belgium, Canada, Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom, and gave the proceeds of his work to housing and schools for his parishioners.
Biography
In 2002 Claerhout himself announced that some of the works attributed to him were forgeries. A Bloemfontein art dealer had printed them and sold them through online auction sites. The scandal was loud, although the artist was its source.
He was born on 15 February 1919 in Pittem, in West Flanders. His family was an artistic one, and as a student he belonged to a local art society. He had no formal training at an art school.
In 1946, having completed his training for the priesthood, he went to South Africa as a missionary of the Catholic Church; he was twenty-seven. He belonged to the Oblate order. He was first sent to the Transvaal, and in 1948 was transferred to the Orange Free State, later the province of the Free State. He lived on a farm near Bloemfontein and served as a priest, painting in his free hours. By some accounts he worked among the Sotho people and in Basutoland; the sources do not quite agree on this. He began to paint in earnest after moving to Thaba Nchu in 1960. In oil he made landscapes and figures, often with biblical subjects. His canvases show donkeys, sunflowers and the people he met day after day. The colours are vivid, the paint thick, the forms deliberately exaggerated. He also worked in pastel, ink, pencil and charcoal, and later tried sculpture, clay, wood carving, wall painting, monotype, linocut and designs for stained glass. He is often linked with Flemish Expressionism, above all with Constant Permeke, who likewise painted peasants and the land. To my mind, the resemblance is clearest in the heavy, impasto texture.
In 1957 he returned to Belgium for a time to show his work in several museums. He exhibited in Belgium, South Africa (1961), Canada, Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom. In 1958 he joined a circle of painters, writers and art patrons in the Free State, known as the Bloemfontein Group.
In 1979, during a visit to Belgium, he had a heart attack, and later that year he underwent an operation in South Africa. Afterwards his palette changed: the earthy tones inherited from Flemish painting gave way to bright colours.
He gave a large part of his earnings to the building of housing and schools for the people of his mission in Bloemfontein, Thaba Nchu and the surrounding area. He also wrote books, among them four collections of poetry. In May 2000 he painted a golden bird on the flyleaf of a book he gave to the novelist Zakes Mda. Mda dedicated his fifth novel, “The Madonna of Excelsior”, to the golden bird painted by Father Frans Claerhout.
Claerhout spent his last years in seclusion, at the St. Francis Catholic Mission in Tweespruit, a home for retired priests. He died on 4 July 2006 in Bloemfontein.
Profile notes