814. DUTCH BOATS IN A CALM.
P. J. Clays (Belgian: 1818-1900).
Paul Jean Clays was a native of Bruges. He studied art in Paris under Gudin, and afterwards settled at Brussels, where in 1851 he received a gold medal. He frequently exhibited at the French Salon, and was a chevalier of the Legion of Honour as well as of the Order of Leopold. For a long time, says a French critic, "the sea, or rather the water, has had no interpreter more exact than Clays: he knows its clearness, and he knows how to render the little noisy waves, all bathed in light." "He does not paint the sea," says another, "but the Scheldt where it widens, and those gray and light waters that bear you on a steamer from Moerdyk to Rotterdam. With a profound feeling for these things he expresses the humidity of the skies of Western Flanders, the sleep of the calmed waters, or the caressing, and sometimes menacing, of the breeze which makes the little uneasy waves stride around the barges loaded to the brim." Some of his pictures have fetched very large prices—one having sold in New York for £3550 (Miss Clement and Laurence Hutton: Artists of the Nineteenth Century).