Charles Verlat

Charles Verlat or Karel Verlat (25 November 1824 – 23 October 1890) was a Belgian painter, watercolorist, engraver (printmaker), art educator and director of the Antwerp Academy. He painted many subjects and was particularly known as an animalier and portrait painter. He also created Orientalist works, genre scenes, including a number of singeries, religious compositions and still lifes. He was a professor of drawing and director of the Antwerp Academy when Vincent van Gogh spent a brief period as a student at the Academy in 1886. The two men got into arguments about van Gogh's unconventional style of drawing.

Life

He was born in Antwerp as the son of a manufacturer of soap, oil and soda. His mother arranged for the young Charles to get his first drawing classes from the Dutch sculptor Johannes Antonius van der Ven, who was then studying at the Antwerp Academy. From an early age he lived for art. He left formal school education at the early age of fourteen and was accepted together with Godfried Guffens to take lessons at the private studio located in the Vleeshuis of Nicaise de Keyser. De Keyser was one of the key figures in the Belgian Romantic-historical school of painting. At the time de Keyser had about 30 pupils including some who came to prominence such as Edouard Hamman, Jan Swerts, Joseph Lies and Johan Bernard Wittkamp. At the same time Verlat followed courses at the Antwerp Academy where he studied, among others, with Gustave Wappers and Josephus Laurentius Dyckmans.

He started participating in the salons of his time and in 1843 sent his first important picture, Pippin the Short Killing a Lion to the Antwerp triennial salon. His first paintings were inspired by the Belgian Romantic school and dealt with important events from Belgian history. He also gradually started to paint animal scenes as well as genre scenes. In 1849, he painted his first religious composition which was intended for the St Gummarus church in Lier. He participated in the Prix de Rome of Belgium in 1847 but was not successful, possible as the result of his partial incapacitation due to a broken arm. Fortunately, a wealthy relative called Albert Marnef van Wespelaer provided him in 1849 with a stipend that allowed him to continue his studies for four years.

He left for Paris in 1850 and studied there first in the studio of the Dutch painter Ary Scheffer. Later he studied with Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin at the Académie des Beaux-Arts. From 1852 he had his own studio in Paris. He gained commissions from religious and official institutions in Belgium including the commission from the Antwerp city government for the large historical composition Godefroid de Bouillon during the assault on Jerusalem (1854, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium). In 1855 he won a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle at Paris with his Tiger Attacking a Herd of Buffaloes.

He gradually came under the influence of the Realism of Gustave Courbet. This resulted in his 1857 work Coup de collier (now in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp) showing two horses struggling to pull a heavy cart loaded with bricks while being whipped by their handlers. Despite its vivid depiction and dynamic form, the large-scale work failed to achieve the success its creator had hoped for. When he exhibited it at the 1857 Paris Salon the work was mocked in the French magazine Le Charivari with a cartoon showing men helping to push a very heavy cart out of the Salon and the text "Le public poussant à la roue pour aider la charrette à sortir de l’Exposition de peinture" (The public pushing the wheel to help the cart leave the painting exhibition). The work was also sharply criticized by Le Figaro's art critic Jean Rousseau who wrote that the work only was good enough for use as a shop sign for a removal company. Verlat took revenge by painting a monkey shaving itself while wiping its feet on the copy of the newspaper in which the criticism had been published. He returned for a year to Antwerp to return the next year to work in his studio in Paris. During this time he started to establish a reputation as an animal painter. He also painted religious subjects and his Pietà of 1866 was so successful that it earned him the distinction of being appointed a knight in the French Legion of Honour.

In 1869, he left Paris to take up the invitation of Charles Alexander, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach to establish a painting class at the Grand-Ducal Saxon Art School set up by the Grand Duke. Max Liebermann was one of his students in his painting class. He was very appreciated by the Grand Duke and taught art classes to the daughters of the Grand Duke. He became later the acting head of the Art School. The Grand Duke also bestowed on him the Order of the White Falcon. During this period he was active as a portrait painter. He moved in the cultural circles of Weimar and was friends with Franz Liszt whose portrait he painted. They would stay in touch and later Verlat would be instrumental in Liszt's visit to Antwerp in 1881.

In August 1875 Verlat left his official positions in Weimar and traveled to Cairo where he stayed for six months. He then moved on to Jerusalem where he would reside for two years. He traveled throughout Palestine and painted the people, animals and landscapes. He seems to have been motivated by a desire to study the real life of the people who formed the subjects of his religious paintings. His major creations during this time included large-scale religious compositions Vox populi (1876, St. Lawrence Church, Alkmaar), Vox Dei (1877, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp), The Tomb of Christ and The Flight into Egypt.

Verlat returned to Antwerp in 1877. He exhibited the paintings he had created in Palestine in various locations, including in Weimar, Antwerp, Brussels and London. He also built a wooden shed on a vacant lot in the Twaalf Maandenstraat in Antwerp, immediately next to the Handelsbeurs to exhibit these paintings. It was later used to exhibit or auction off works of other artists.……

原文较长，这里只摘了前面一部分，摘自英文维基百科「Charles Verlat」（暂时没有中文条目，下面是英文原文），按 CC BY-SA 4.0 使用，去掉了参考文献、外部链接等尾部小节和表格，其余文字未作改动。