The Painter, Charles Cornelius.

This is a still life by the fictional illustrator and painter, Charles Cornelius, 1899-1957(?), younger brother of my grandfather, Harold Connolly.
After returning from the First World War, Charles Connolly began his career as a cartographer in London. One morning at a Woolworths, he met and fell in love with Sylvia Broek, a Belgian au pair.
In the Winter of 1935, Charles changed his surname to Cornelius, and  the young couple moved to Ostend, Belgium. From this point onwards Cornelius produced an impressive body of work.
In April 1940, with the Nazi invasion imminent, Cornelius resisted all pleas from his family to return to the safety of England. He elected to remain in Ostend with his beloved Sylvia and, as he said in one of his final letters, he “cast his lot” with the people of Belgium.
In his last communication, dated June 1940, a few weeks after the fall of the Low Countries, Cornelius wrote:
“The Germans have declared my work to be degenerate. I have closed my studio and now, instead of creating large works in oil, I produce tiny watercolors in my bedroom at the dead of night.”
Following this, nothing more was heard from my great uncle, and my family suspected the worst.