Charles Ernest SMETS (1909–c.1987) Lively alleyway in a medina in Morocco (probably Fez), oil on canvas mounted on panel, signed lower left, 60 x 50 cm. Note: A Belgian painter, draughtsman and engraver, Charles Ernest Smets trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Marseille, a port city at that time open to the Mediterranean and North Africa. He travelled throughout southern Europe before embarking on an extended stay in Morocco, an experience that had a lasting influence on his work. His Moroccan paintings constitute the best-known part of his body of work: medina alleyways, bustling souks, southern oases and scenes of daily life. Fez, Tinghir and the towns of southern Morocco feature regularly in his titles. His broad, impasto brushwork stems from a late form of Orientalism tinged with Impressionism, attentive to the contrasts of light and shadow characteristic of covered alleyways and to the polychromatic architecture: zellige, glazed tiles and stucco. His body of work also includes portraits, nudes and colonial subjects, including a major composition from 1934 depicting the cocoa harvest.