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Signed and dated ‘André Lynen 1936’ (lower right); dated ‘3-11-36’ (on the reverse).
Sizes:
Frame: 35 × 44 cm | 13.8 × 17.3 in
Artwork: 24.5 × 32 cm | 9.6 × 12.6 in
A black steamer with a red funnel comes into harbour past red-roofed houses and spring trees, the hills across the water fading into a pale sky. The paint is applied thickly, in ridged, sculptural strokes that catch the light — a small panel done on the spot and dated on the back to the 3rd of November 1936.
André Lynen (1888–1984), born in Antwerp, was one of Belgium’s foremost marine painters: founder in 1933 of the Royal Society of Belgian Marine Painters, a fixture of the Brussels salons and a lifelong resident of the coast at Nieuwpoort. Harbours, fishing boats and the changing light over water were his life’s subject, painted in a robust late-Impressionist manner.
Signed and dated ‘André Lynen 1936’ at the lower right and dated again on the reverse.
Very good condition: thick, well-preserved impasto with no retouching; the board flat and sound with minor wear at the edges; an old stamp and the date on the reverse. Please contact us to request a detailed Condition Report.
This lot is catalogued under the artist’s name without qualification and is covered by our Five-Year Authenticity Guarantee under Section 4 of the Conditions of Sale. The guarantee concerns authorship; it does not extend to provenance, dating, condition or value, which are described to the best of our knowledge.
Buyers should review the catalogue carefully and raise any questions before bidding; additional information is not ordinarily provided after the auction.
Five years on authorship for works catalogued under the artist’s name without qualification (Section 4 of our Conditions of Sale); headings such as “Attributed to” or “Circle of” are sold as described.
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The estimate of €400–€600 is our opinion of the range this work should reach; the starting price of €300 is the lowest bid we accept. We have not published comparable results for this lot; ask us before the sale and we will send the results we based the estimate on.
Bidding on this site, the buyer’s premium is 25%, Spanish IVA included, and there is no VAT on the hammer price and no card fee: at the starting price of €300 the total is €375; at the low estimate of €400 the total is €500; at the high estimate of €600 the total is €750.
Through LiveAuctioneers, Invaluable, Drouot or Bidspirit the premium is 30%, so the same hammer of €600 costs €780 there. Shipping and insurance are quoted separately; the estimator on this page gives the figure for your country. Buyers outside the EU pay no Spanish tax on the lot; the destination’s import rules apply (United States: original paintings and drawings enter duty-free; United Kingdom: 5% import VAT on art). Card payments are accepted up to €10,000; larger amounts by bank transfer.
Yes. This lot is catalogued under the artist’s name without qualification, so it carries our Five-Year Authenticity Guarantee under Section 4 of the Conditions of Sale: if the authorship proves materially incorrect, you may return the work within five years for a refund of the purchase price. The guarantee concerns authorship; provenance, dating, condition and value are described to the best of our knowledge and are not guaranteed.
A condition report with ultraviolet photographs is prepared on request, normally within two working days; the condition summary on this page is examined in-house and is not a conservator’s report. Further photographs of any detail, the reverse or the frame are sent on request. The work can be examined in our Barcelona showroom by appointment before the sale, and you are welcome to send your own conservator or specialist.
André-Victor Lynen was born in Antwerp in 1888, a distant nephew of the Brussels painter and illustrator Amédée Lynen. He trained in the Antwerp and Brussels academies and made the sea his life’s subject: the harbours, fishing fleets and dunes of Nieuwpoort and Ostend, where he lived and worked for most of his life, and the ports of the Mediterranean and the North on his travels.
A regular of the Brussels Salon, he exhibited in Luxembourg in 1928 and Copenhagen in 1931, and in 1933 founded the Royal Society of Belgian Marine Painters, whose annual exhibition he organised at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.
Lynen painted in a vigorous late-Impressionist manner, often on small panels in thick, ridged strokes that catch the light of the coast. Boats at anchor, steamers entering harbour, winter landscapes and stormy seas make up the bulk of his work, which he also produced in watercolour.
He is represented in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, in the Mu.ZEE in Ostend — which devoted an exhibition to him — and in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Reims. He died in Brussels in 1984 at the age of ninety-five.
André Lynen (1888–1984), founder of the Royal Society of Belgian Marine Painters and lifelong painter of the harbours of Nieuwpoort and Ostend; his 1936 Steamer in the Harbour is at auction with Aurora & Athena.
Highlights of the Aurora & Athena autumn sale on 17 October 2026: Bridget Tichenor, Nicholas Roerich, Konstantin Korovin, Gerard Sekoto, Jan Zrzavý, Pan Yuliang, a Miró lithograph and the painters of the École de Paris.
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