Gustave De Smet (1877-1943) was a key figure in the second generation of the Sint-Martens-Latem School. Alongside his brother Léon (1881–1966), he entered the artistic world at an early age, assisting his father, Jules, a set decorator.

De Smet pursued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts of Ghent, where he met Constant Permeke and Frits Van den Berghe. Their enduring friendship is symbolized by the sculpture that Permeke made of him, which can still be seen today on his grave in the municipal cemetery of Deurle.

The early compositions of De Smet reveal the influence of Émile Claus who led him toward an emotional luminism grounded in the interplay of color and form. A sensualist luminism seeking to capture the shifting atmosphere of landscapes bathed in a continuously changing light. De Smet was a rigorous artist: he believed that the subject of a painting should serve his technique, not the other way around. During his Impressionist phase he also became a refined colorist, devoting considerable time to the search for the perfect chromatic nuance.

During the First World War he settled in the Nether­lands with his colleague Frits Van den Berghe, before eventually returning to Belgium and moving to Deurle. The Dutch experience proved essential because here he encountered Expressionism, through the Cubist Henri Le Fauconnier, as well as Futurism, and, above all, the German Expressionists. At the beginning of the 1920s, De Smet’s art moved toward abstraction. Geometric lines dominated the scene, fully absorbing the philosophy of the German movement Der Blaue Reiter. Over these years De Smet evolved toward a new style. His canvases were no longer populated with simple rural scenes, but with urban subjects. Men and women in moments of lighthearted amusement at the circus, cabaret or at a restaurant appear in works such as La ville, Blues, La loge, Le cirque.

In 1927 Gustave De Smet signed a contract with the Galerie Le Centaure. This gallery played a decisive role in promoting De Smet and other Belgian artists of his generation, including Hippolyte Daeye, Oscar Jespers, Frits Van den Berghe… Urban subjects, nudes, bourgeois interiors are closely tied to his contract with Le Centaure. Some observers viewed this shift as a loss of moral rigor, a sign of greater submission to commercial success and profit. Yet the choice of subject matter also depended on his patrons, and the artist was bound by contractual obligations. De Smet, however, remained too proud and uncompromising to abandon his artistic convictions entirely. In 1932, however, for economic reasons, the Galerie Le Centaure closed. The result was the near liquidation of an entire generation of artists, De Smet among them, and his works were sold at very low prices.

Later in the 1930s, De Smet executed a series dedicated to Deurle and its village festivities. During the same decade, and until his death, he produced a number of still lifes. In these works, De Smet abandoned the strict discipline of the 1920s. Instinct replaced reason, and his technique became more direct and daring. This loosening of rigor reflects the final years of his life, marked by illness and a growing awareness of approaching death.