Christ Mocked
Artist / maker
Jakob Smits (painters (artists))Date
ca. 1926Period
20th centuryCollection
Museum of Fine Arts Ghent
Jakob Smits was trained as a decorative painter, but soon chose what he himself called 'the simple work', 'symbolic, poetic and real'. He settled in Achterbos near Mol in the Belgian Kempen. The life of farmers, nature and the Bible became his main sources of inspiration. From 1912 onwards, and especially after the First World War, Smits began to paint…
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Jakob Smits was trained as a decorative painter, but soon chose what he himself called 'the simple work', 'symbolic, poetic and real'. He settled in Achterbos near Mol in the Belgian Kempen. The life of farmers, nature and the Bible became his main sources of inspiration. From 1912 onwards, and especially after the First World War, Smits began to paint in clear colours with a typical, grainy layer of paint. This was created by constantly overpainting existing layers of paint. Remarkable for this last phase in Smits' oeuvre is the simplification of the figures and their surroundings, related to Expressionism. This painting was also known as Let the children come to me. That this is a depiction of Christ Mocked can be deduced from a similar etching and a red chalk drawing, in which the artist clearly depicted the figure of Christ gagged.
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