It is years since the writer first saw a landscape by Claus, and he remembers vividly the pleasure it gave. The painting was in the well-known collection of Mr. John Maddocks, of Bradford. Upon a huge canvas the artist had depicted a cornfield ripe for the sickle, and in the midst of the wheat red poppies grew. Across the foreground, emerging from the wheat, wandered a few white ducks. Over the whole was the fierce glare of a noon-day sun. The work was convincing, naturalistic, yet poetic, inasmuch as it seemed to chant the universal hymn of nature. It was a revelation to those artists who found themselves in Bradford at that period. Unknown and a stranger, Claus received in spirit silent congratulations for his splendid achievement, which aroused in several breasts a keen feeling of emulation. The artist writes: “Mr. Maddocks has always strongly encouraged me, and had the courage to buy my work at a time when everybody in Belgium found me by far too audacious, because, as you may know, the leaders, the standard-bearers as it were, of the young Belgian school of painting are not at all in sympathy with the beautiful art of Monet and his school.” Since that day Emile Claus has greatly increased his following throughout the world, being least appreciated in his own country. Emile Claus is a painter whose brush is charged with the sweetness of life, courageous, healthful, and buoyant. His pictures breathe of sunlight and fresh air, and it is easy to see with what sheer delight he throws himself into his work. When one seeks for the reason which so suddenly changed this prosaic painter of the Antwerp bourgeois into an Impressionist of the most modern school, one discovers the usual cause, the Englishmen of the commencement of the last century. In a recent letter to the writer, Emile Claus says that in England, above all other countries, were born light and life in painting. “I have all too quickly glanced at the Turners and Constables of London, nevertheless it was a revelation to me, and those great artists Monet, Sisley, and Pissarro continue simply what that giant Turner discovered; just as the grand epoch of Rousseau, Millet, Dupré, and Corot, passed over Belgium to find their inspiration in the marvellous works of the Dutch school.” [Illustration: EMILE CLAUS ] [Illustration: THE VILLAGE STREET · EMILE CLAUS ] In the country of the Lys the artist continues to work, producing a series of pictures as beautiful as they are uncommon. One may mention his magnificent _Flemish Farm_ of 1883, the _Old Gardener_ of 1887 now in the Liége gallery, the canvas in the Antwerp gallery, and the fine work by which he is represented in the Luxembourg. Charming in colour, they will be found broad in manner, and perfectly original in sentiment. [Illustration: RETURNING FROM MARKET · EMILE CLAUS ] [Illustration: GOLDEN AUTUMN · EMILE CLAUS ]