Jean Pierre François Lamorinière

Jean Pierre François Lamorinière, Jan Pieter Frans Lamorinière or François Lamorinière (20 April 1828, in Antwerp – 3 January 1911, in Antwerp) was a Belgian landscape painter best known for his realistic depictions of landscapes in his home country. His work is situated between the previous generation of the Romantic landscape painters and the Realist landscape.

Jean Pierre François Lamorinière was a painter and etcher whose main subject matter was the landscape. He is regarded as a transitional figure in Belgian landscape painting between the Romanticism of Balthasar Paul Ommeganck and Eugène Joseph Verboeckhoven and later Realism. He painted his landscapes from nature based on his own observations. Even while his flat landscapes are derived from his direct observation of nature, Lamorinière did not just paint nature as he found it. He ‘improved’ on nature so that his compositions could meet the ideal spiritual image which he had of nature. This was reflected in the strict construction and detailed analysis of his compositions, which emphasized the static, and his smooth, meticulous style of painting. This approach is obvious in his Fir forest in Putte (1833, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp) with the strict lines of the stately rising tree trunks and the perspective effect of the trees’ shadows. Lamorinière was passionate about trees and paid meticulous attention to every detail of their anatomy. Important influences on his work were the Barbizon School as well as the landscape traditions of the Flemish and Dutch school. The landscapes of Joseph Lies also were an influence on his work. The artist preferred dark tones and usually depicted nature without any human presence.