Lode Matthijs (Anderlecht 1915- Sclayn 1995) learned as a self-taught artist from among others Felix De Boeck. In his first period after WWII he painted impressionistic. From the mid-1960s onwards he evolved into a synthetic expressionist style. Here you will recognise influences of Gaugain and the school of Pont-Aven, characterised by a simplified expression and a surreal colour palette. In his paintings of that period, Lode Matthijs provides an intimate and mysterious framework in which his figures show a hint of fear through stylistic distortions. This work was bought in the second half of the 1970s and has always been in the same private collection. The painting comes with the 1979 book in French about the painter, of the publishing house ‘éditions d'art Lucien De Meyer’.