Eugène Verboeckhoven Paintings

Biography of Eugène Verboeckhoven

Also known as: Eugène Joseph Verboeckhoven

Teacher of: Edmond Jean Baptiste Tschaggeny (1818-1873).

Awarded La Croix de la Légion d'honneur
Awarded l'ordre de Léopold de Belgique
Awarded al Croix de Fer d'Allemagu
Trained as sculptor under his father
Born Warneton, Belgium
Died Bruxelles, Belgium

Eugène-Joseph Verboeckhoven was born in Warneton on June 8, 1798 and was the son and student of Barthelemy Verboeckhoven – the Belgian sculptor. Eugène Verboeckhoven began his career as a sculptor, but quickly turned his attentions to painting. Eugène Verboeckhoven studied with Balthazar Ommeganck (1755 – 1826), who was considered one of the finest sheep artists of his time, and took classes at the Academy in Gent under A. Voituron.

Verboeckhoven’s success was immense and his paintings found buyer’s before they were finished; it is even said that his talents were greater that his teacher B. Ommeganck. During his long and successful career Eugène Verboeckhoven traveled and exhibited his paintings throughout Europe. Eugène Verboeckhoven made his debut at the Gent Salon in 1820, where he received great praise, and continued to exhibit there throughout his lifetime. Eugène Verboeckhoven was also a frequent exhibitor at exhibitions in Brussels, Paris, London, Saint Petersburg and Antwerp.

Verboeckhoven established a studio in Brussels where he taught numerous artists and collaborated with many of the more important artists of his day; including De Jonghe, De Noter, Verwee, and Koekkoek. Among the many honors Eugène Verboeckhoven received were the Legion of Honour, Order of Leopold, Order of the Christ of Portugal, and the Iron Cross. Eugène Verboeckhoven died in 1881.

Examples of his painting can be seen in numerous museum collections including those in Amsterdam; Antwerp; Berlin; Brussels; Leeds; Liverpool; London; Nantes; Oslo; and Gent.

Verboeckhoven began drawing and sculpting as a young child. In 1815 his family moved to Ghent, where Eugène Verboeckhoven attended the Academy from 1816 to 1818 with support from the sculptor Albert Voituron (1787-1847) and later by a Ghent patron, Ferdinand Van der Haegen.From 1818 Verboeckhoven was a pupil of Balthasar-Paul Ommeganck, whose classical pastoral landscapes became a model for his own paintings, such as the Landscape with Cattle and A Cowherd by a Tree on display at the Rijkmuseum in Amsterdam and Halting Place.

In 1827 Eugène Verboeckhoven moved to Brussels with his family, and soon thereafter was made a director of the Musee de Bruxelles. Thanks to his initiative, the pictures in Antwerp Cathedral, including a number of significant works by Peter Paul Rubens, were saved when the town came under fire in 1832.Verboeckhoven became a teacher at the Academie Royale in Brussels in 1845, and his pupils there included Louis-Pierre Verwee (1807-77), his son, Alfred Jaques Verwee, and the brothers Charles Tschaggeny (1815-94) and Edmond Tschaggeny (1813-73).Verboeckhoven frequently painted the animals as part of landscapes by J. B. Klombeck, Jean-Baptiste De Jonghe, Henri Van Assche, Barend Cornelis Koekkoek and Louis-Pierre Verwee.

Eugène Verboeckhoven is deemed to be one of the foremost animal artists of the nineteenth century.In Verboeckhoven’s work animals often bear human characteristics and are reminiscent of bourgeois portraits of the time.In his book on Eugène Verboeckhoven, Berko writes “he could have been called the “Raphael of sheep”, for his rams are so well drawn, arrogant and proud; his ewes surrounded by graceful lambs, look gentle and complacent as ewes do, and all his pastoral scenes are bathed in a warm, pleasing and golden light.Eugène Verboeckhoven was a remarkable painter of horses, goats and game; Eugène Verboeckhoven also painted small figures on foot or on horseback, playing scrupulous attention to detail; the gun, the powder flask, the hunter’s gaiters, down to the picturesque hat, the threadbare overcoat, the shepherd’s crook, and of course the last-born baby lamb under the shepherd’s arm.”

In 1834 the greatest Dutch Romantic landscape painter of all, B.C. Koekkoek, came with his wife to live in Kleve. In 1841 Koekkoek founded an Academy in Kleve and Klombeck and his uncle were among the first members. This was to have a most profound and lasting influence on Klombeck who came to be regarded as one of Koekkoek’s finest pupils. Klombeck exhibited his landscapes at the Kleve Academy and also in Nijmagen. Between 1843 and 1856 Eugène Verboeckhoven was a frequent participant in international salons, including Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Dresden and Berlin.

Klombeck became a leading member of the Romantic Scool and Eugène Verboeckhoven was the foremost representative of the Kleve Academy when B.C. Koekkoek died in 1862. Romantic motifs such as prominent trees and ruins, stormy weather and figures fighting against the elements, played an important part in Klombeck’s oeuvre. Compositions with diagonal elements, such as tracks and streams disappearing into the background, are features strongly reminiscent of the works of Koekkoek and which Klombeck often featured in his paintings.

It is thought that Klombeck was introduced to the great Belgian animal and figure painter Eugène Verboeckhoven by B.C. Koekkoek, who had himself collaborated with the artist in 1844. Klombeck first worked with Eugène Verboeckhoven in 1856 and frequently did so thereafter. This painting, dated 1859, was painted when both artists were at the height of their careers. Klombeck’s landscape supplies a wealth of traditional motifs and detail and the figures and animals have been exquisitely executed by the acknowledged master of that genre, Eugène Verboeckhoven.

List of Famous Paintings by Eugène Verboeckhoven