Charles de Groux (1825-1870): Interior with a priest and two men, oil on canvas

Work: 59,5 x 48,5 cm 
Frame: 76,5 x 65,5 cm 

Charles de Groux (or Degroux) was a French painter, engraver, lithographer and illustrator. As he moved to Belgium at a young age and his whole career took place in Belgium he is usually referred to as a Belgian artist. His depictions of scenes from the life of the disadvantaged and lower-class people of his time mark him as the first Belgian social realist painter. These works made him the precursor of Belgian Realist artists such as Constantin Meunier and Eugène Laermans.

Around 1853 De Groux had his first success with his work 'The Drunk' (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium). This work depicting a dying woman, her drunk husband and their young children in a cramped and poorly lit room signaled a clear break with the lofty and elegant style and subjects of his master Navez.

De Groux became an illustrator of the satirical periodical 'Uylenspiegel' founded by Félicien Rops, a prominent Belgian illustrator and draughtsman. Rops and De Groux met Gustave Courbet several times at the exhibitions of the latter in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. Courbet's influence on de Groux's aesthetic choices is evident as early as 1853.

He became a member of the Société Royale Belge des Aquarellistes (Royal Belgian Society of Watercolourists) founded in 1856 to promote watercolour art in Belgium through the organisation of annual exhibitions. He joined the Société Libre des Beaux-Arts (Free Society of Fine Arts), an organization formed in 1868 by Belgian artists to react against academicism and to advance Realist painting and artistic freedom. Based in Brussels, the society was active until 1876, by which time the aesthetic values it espoused had infiltrated the official Salon.