Antoine Wiertz

Belgian artist (1806–1865)

Antoine Joseph Wiertz (22 February 1806 – 18 June 1865) was a Belgian painter, sculptor, lithographer and art writer. He is known for his religious, historical, and allegorical works and portraits. He was an eccentric figure who originally was much influenced by the works of Peter Paul Rubens and Michelangelo. Some of his works are erotic and macabre and presage Belgian Symbolism. While snubbed by contemporary art critics, he enjoyed the support of the new Belgian state, which in return for his paintings assisted him in building his personal studio/home in Brussels (now the Wiertz Museum), where the artist worked on his art and writings as a recluse.

He was born in Dinant as the son of Louis François Wiertz (born in Rocroi in 1782) and Catherine Disière, a daily wage earner (born in Leffe 1768 1844). His father had previously been a soldier in Napoleon I's army and was, from 1814 until his death in 1822, a brigadier in the military police of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, His father reportedely instilled in him the ambition to become a great man. At an early age, he showed a talent for drawing, modelling and woodcarving. Paul de Maibe, member of the Lower House of the States General for the Province of Namur and owner of ironworks in Wiertz's native town Dinant, noticed the young Wiertz's talent for the plastic arts, took him under his wing. He helped him secure a place at the Antwerp art academy in 1820, when he was only 14 years old. Thanks to his protector de Maibe king William I of the Netherlands awarded him an annual stipend from 1821 onwards. Wiertz's artistic mentors at the academy, Mattheus Ignatius van Bree (1773 1839) and Willem Jacob Herreyns (1743 1827), further stimulated his love for Flemish painting and particularly for the work of Peter Paul Rubens. Herreyns was, in fact, the last follower of Rubens in the 18th century, when interest in the painter had been superseded by neoclassicism. From that moment on, the oeuvre of Rubens would remain for Wiertz a shining example to be emulated. In 1828, Wiertz came out second in the competition for the prestigious Prix de Rome of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. Between November 1829 and May 1832, he stayed in Paris, where he made a living painting portraits. He studied the old masters at the Louvre where he admired Rubens' works but turned his nose up at contemporary French masters such as David, Géricault and Girodet, all three of whom had died a few years earlier. His humiliation at the Paris salon of 1839 led to a profound rancour against art critics and against Paris, as expressed in his virulent pamphlet Bruxelles capitale, Paris province. In 1844, Wiertz painted a second version of his Patrocles on an even bigger scale than the first (the 1836 version measures 3.85 by 7.03 meters, the 1844 version 5.20 by 8.52 meter). The 1836 version is now in the Museum of Walloon Art in Liège, the 1844 in the Wiertz Museum in Brussels. After the Paris disaster, Wiertz veered more and more towards the excessive. A fine example is the monumental The Fall of the rebellious Angels, 1841, painted on an arched canvas of 11.53 by 7.93 meter. He received national recognition in his home country and was made Knight of the Order of Leopold. The death of his mother in 1844 was a terrible blow to the artist. He left Liège in 1845 to settle in Brussels for good. During this period he painted a confrontation of Beauty and Death, Two young girls (The beautiful Rosine) (1847), which remains perhaps his most famous work. Dissatisfied with the shiny effect of oil painting in particular in large canvases, he developed a new technique combining the smoothness of oil painting with the speed of execution and the dullness of painting in fresco. This technique of mat painting entailed the use of a mixture of colours, turpentine and petrol on holland. The Homeric battle (1853) was the first big scale painting executed in this technique. However, the components used in this technique are responsible for the slow decay of the works produced with it and have impacted on the critical reception of the artist's work. The use of the chemicals may also have contributed to the artist's early death after suffering from ill health for a long time.

The Antoine Wiertz Museum is now one of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. It is located at 62, rue Vautier/Vautierstraat in Ixelles, in the heart of the Leopold Quarter, near Brussels Luxembourg railway station. The Rue Wiertz runs from the museum through the European Parliament complex, in an unintended echo of Wiertz' call for Brussels to become the capital of Europe.