Claude Verlinde is a French painter who works in the vein of “fantastic realism”, sometimes called “magic realism”, and his work shows the lineage of fantastical art from Bruegel and Bosch to the Surrealists and contemporary magic realists. He was born June 24, 1927 in Paris, his lineage is Flemish. 
Early on, the school art teacher pointed out young Claude’s artistic talent to his parents and persuaded  them to enroll their son in an art school.

He entered the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. His studies, however, were interrupted by the German occupation.

While the Verlinde family escaped the occupied Paris, the family home was destroyed.

Returning to Paris, Claude resumes his artistic pursuits at the  School of Fine Arts in Paris.
He also attended workshop of anatomical drawing of the Grande Chaumiere.

The turning point of his life as a young artist came on the day he declined an unexpected and lucrative offer of a position of a lead designer of public projects in a large company, to paint freely.

His often darkly themed works employ the dark earth tones of the early Renaissance, as well as some of the visual staging and precise rendering characteristic of that period. He sometimes uses a brighter palette, but his work always has a feeling of referencing another time, if not another world.

There is a trove of larger versions on the Russian Blog Beyond time, beyond space. There are also galleries on beinArt Surreal Art Collective and Ten Dreams.