Alfred Van Neste (1874-1969) Belgian, Pair of Antique Signed Lithographs. The wider piece shows a bridge over a small river in the heart of a town, and the narrower piece shows a woman walking through a Flemish courtyard. Both signed in pencil bottom right, near original signature in the print. The narrower piece is numbered 261/350, and the wider one numbered 342/350, both in pencil. 

Condition: Some spotting on both images. Commensurate with age. 

Overall Size: 37 x 32 in. 

Sight Size: 24 1/4 x 20 in. 

Alfred Joseph Auguste Van Neste was born in Bruges, Belgium in 1874. He studied under Florimond van Acker as a youth, preparing to become a draftsman and etcher, and then worked for him for five years before attending art school. Churches, homes, and villages along canals were key subjects in Van Neste’s cityscape paintings. He created Art Nouveau-style figural illustrations and sketches for books and magazines. He would make trips each spring to follow and illustrate the migration of birds in a specific area of Belgium, and although primarily an oil painter Van Neste was also a skilled watercolorist, using muted tones to create images of boats in the harbors near coastal cities. At the turn of the century he frequently traveled to Paris where he worked as an illustrator and poster designer for a time, taking courses in art at the Academy of Antwerp in the summer. In the 1910s he settled in Antwerp to become an instructor there, and was commissioned by the city to make posters, floats, and costumes for numerous processions. In the aftermath of World War I he relocated to Uccle. He remained in the city throughout the Interwar years and World War II, but his experiences during the early 1940s traumatized him, and he produced less and less art in the following decades and faded into obscurity. Van Neste died in Sint-Genesius-Rode in 1969, and in the 1990s his work was rediscovered by critics, who have begun to acknowledge his place in the pantheon of early 20th Century artists. 

Some spotting on both images. Commensurate with age.