2 Farmers of "The Meuse"

In the summer of 1897 and 1898 (a year before his death), Henri Evenepoel left Paris to join his family on holiday  to the village of Wépion (near Namur). Both the holiday home and the view of the Trieu-Colin have remained virtually unchanged to this day.
Although Evenepoel died very young (aged 27), all in all he left us a fairly extensive body of work. He was constantly painting and drawing and he always had his drawing and painting materials at hand to depict impressions of everyday life. Also he painters obsession with photography was quit remarkable: he liked to record his impressions and was in the possession of a Pocket Kodak camera. A few months before Evenepoel painted our work, he stayed several months in Algeria where he has been sent  by his family to spend the winter because of his tuberculosis. Perhaps father Evenepoel also wants to put distance between Henri and Louise (his cousin, but also the mother of his son Charles). 

What we see are a man and woman heading to the market, captured as if by a fixed camera with the rolling hills on the background. Evenepoel liked to depict everyday life, not idealised. This led to paintings of intimate domestic scenes, images of the seamy side of society (drowning people, beggars, prostitutes) but also seemingly ordinary scenes as is the case here. 
Stylistically, the painter was also very progressive: he wanted to capture the fleetingness of things in an expressive way (Together with Rouault and Matisse, he would co-found expressionism and fauvism) to try to get to the heart of things.

1898, Monogrammed below left HE
Oil on Canvas, 38 x 46 cm (15 x 18 ¹/₈ inches)