Eliane de Meuse

Eliane de Meuse
Birth name Eliane de Meuse
Born 9 August 1899(1899-08-09)
Brussels, Belgium
Died 3 February 1993(1993-02-03) (aged 93)
Forest, Brussels, Belgium
Nationality Belgian
Field Painting and Music (Violinist)
Training Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels from 1916 to 1920 – inscription number 18568
Movement None. However some historians refer the very beginning of her career to Impressionism and to Fauvisme brabançon
Works

Daphnis et Chloé, rewarded by the Prix Godecharle – 1921

225 x 180 cm
Influenced by James Ensor, Rik Wouters
Awards Prix Godecharle – 1921

Eliane, Georgette, Diane de Meuse (9 August 1899 – 3 February 1993) was a Belgian painter. She was the wife of Max Constant Armand Van Dyck. They attended together the courses of the same professors at L'Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.

Contents

Biography

Eliane de Meuse took her first drawing lessons at the age of fourteen with Ketty Hoppe, the wife of the Belgian painter Victor Gilsoul.

She also trained in the studio of the genre painter Guillaume van Strydonck, member of Les XX[1] and James Ensor's friend. At the same time, she received advices from the sculptor Marcel Rau, Prix de Rome – 1908.

In 1916, Meuse decided to become a painter and joined L'Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. She there met the young painter Max Van Dyck, (23 December 1902, (Brussels – Schaerbeek) – 26 December 1992, (Brussels – Ixelles) and married him in 1922. The latter had won the great Prix de Rome (Belgium) in 1920 when he was only 17 years old, a sensational event widely commented in the Belgian press. He taught later the Decorative arts at the Académie des beaux-arts d'Anderlecht of which he eventually became the director.

At the Academy (ARBA, Brussels) Meuse was the student of the Symbolist painter Jean Delville and the portraitist Herman Richir.

From all these influences, her art developed into a style similar to Post-Impressionism, her subject matter including portraits, figures, marines, landscapes and still lifes. In some of her latest paintings underlying abstract structure can be observed.

Critics sensed that Eliane de Meuse had much inherited from the Belgian Luminism, movement born in the very early 20th century, which combined aspects of Realism (Realist visual arts), Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism. It got its name from the style of Emile Claus and of a few other painters, grouped in a circle called Vie et Lumière (Life and light) from which Claus was one of the main founders.

Charles Bernard, the foremost Belgian critic at that time[2] wrote he considered the art of Eliane de Meuse as aimed towards a pure, clear artistic ideal, without any selfish motives. He very rightly felt that the artist did not belong to the Impressionism of Emile Claus, so close to French Pointillism, but that she was the spiritual daughter of James Ensor.

In an article published on 22 October 1936 in the Nation belge, he commented Meuse's first exhibition in these words: A discovery... an artist that reinvents James Ensor and Rik Wouter's impressionism, that enriches impressionism with new elements, in terms of richness and interpretation indicating the presence of a personality... This exhibition took place in the Palais des Beaux-Arts (Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels), where a collection of paintings representing the outcome of fourteen years of dedication in the pursuit of personal expression was presented.[3]

The same year, in Le Courrier d’Anvers, Sander Pierron,[4] another influential critic, wrote he believed this young artist was called to a great destiny. He described Eliane de Meuse as a born colourist with a prodigious talent: Since Rik Wouters such talent had not been observed... she is a colourist able to seize the tiniest variations of light and uses them with harmony as a musician should do with notes, displaying a personal feeling.

K. de Bergen also noted the interesting way to use the colour in her works and added that she demonstrates that: the colour possesses its own truth.[5]

Another critic signing his article by L. J. estimated that we must place Eliane de Meuse amongst the most sensitive painters like Edouard Manet or Marcel Jefferys.[6]

In his monograph dedicated to Eliane de Meuse Paul Caso wrote that: Every type of art work has been tackled, with a natural inclination for still lifes (frequently with wonderful flowers from her garden), the true nub of her work, often studied as a pile of objects, masks, flowers, draperies, many times assembled around the same chair of her studio, a chair which acquires a real personality, in an apparent disorder of forms and colours.[7]

In 1921, she won the Prix Godecharle created in 1881 by Napoleon Godecharle, the son of Gilles-Lambert Godecharle. This prize gave her the opportunity to travel in Italy, the shock of a whole civilization, the ceaseless return to Renaissance sources.[8]

Main individual exhibitions

International group exhibitions

Some of her paintings

Notes

  1. ^ Solange de Behr – Musée d’Art moderne et d’Art contemporain Liège – 1994 [1]
  2. ^ Caso Paul in monograph Eliane de Meuse edited by Prefilm, Brussels, p. 9, 1991.
  3. ^ Caso Paul in monograph Eliane de Meuse edited by Prefilm, Brussels, p. 9, 1991.
  4. ^ Sander Pierron in Le Courrier d’Anvers, 1936
  5. ^ K. de Bergen in Le Journal des Beaux-Arts, 23 October 1936
  6. ^ L. J. in La Flandre Libérale (Gand), 1 November 1936.
  7. ^ Caso Paul in monograph Eliane de Meuse edited by Prefilm, Brussels, 1991.
  8. ^ Guy Dotremont in Les Concours Godecharle ont cent ans 1881-1981, 1981.
  9. ^ Christian Desclez in catalog of the exhibition dedicated to Fauvisme brabançon, 1996

Documentary broadcasted on television

Personnalité à domicile : Éliane de Meuse interviewed by Éric Russon, Télé-Bruxelles, 1991

Further reading

External links