This soft and subdued original watercolor painting is by the famous Belgian painter Frantz Charlet and dates to the turn of the 20th century. A quiet and serene pastoral scene, a mother sits knitting in the grass by the water’s edge while her daughter watches the sailboats going by. A placid look at provincial life in a quaint waterfront town.

Charlet was a student of the Académie de Bruxelles and l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris and is known for his portraiture, landscape, and genre work. Along with a group of ten colleagues, Charlet founded Les XX in October of 1883. Les XX argued against established traditions and invited young, emerging artists from outside Belgium to exhibit with them. Artists who shared their aesthetic ideals and exhibited with the group included luminaries such as Toulouse Lautrec, John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet, and James McNeill Whistler. Les XX also believed strongly in the unity of the avant-garde and the inherent links between the different forms of the arts.

Tranquility is a beautiful work of art that comes in its original, wide profile, ornate, gesso frame.