_P. J. Clays_ (Belgian: 1818-1900).
Paul Jean Clays was a native of Bruges. He studied art in Paris
under Gudin, and afterwards settled at Brussels, where in 1851
he received a gold medal. He frequently exhibited at the
French _Salon_, and was a chevalier of the Legion of Honour as
well as of the Order of Leopold. For a long time, says a French
critic, "the sea, or rather the water, has had no interpreter
more exact than Clays: he knows its clearness, and he knows how
to render the little noisy waves, all bathed in light." "He
does not paint the sea," says another, "but the Scheldt where
it widens, and those gray and light waters that bear you on a
steamer from Moerdyk to Rotterdam. With a profound feeling for
these things he expresses the humidity of the skies of Western
Flanders, the sleep of the calmed waters, or the caressing, and
sometimes menacing, of the breeze which makes the little uneasy
waves stride around the barges loaded to the brim." Some of his
pictures have fetched very large prices--one having sold in New
York for £3550 (Miss Clement and Laurence Hutton: _Artists of
the Nineteenth Century_).