Antoine Joseph Wiertz (22 February 1806 – 18 June 1865) was a Belgian Romantic painter and sculptor. Although frequently considered to be a minor figure today, an “otherworldy eccentric”, he was nevertheless skilled and astute enough to persuade the newly formed Kingdom of Belgium to engage him as its state artist, and provide him with a large studio that is today the Wiertz Museum in Brussels.[1] In return Wiertz agreed to donate all of his work to the state on his death.[2]
The French poet Charles Baudelaire considered Wiertz to be “a charlatan, an idiot, a plagiarist, [and] a “philosophical painter”.[1] Others have considered his work, featuring as it does violent suicides, guillotining or being buried alive, to be that a madman.[2]
Gallery
Deux jeunes filles ou La Belle Rosine (Two Young Girls or the Beautiful Rosine), 1847
Une tête coupée (A Guillotined Head)
Faim, folie et crime (Famine, Madness and Crime), 1853
Allegory with Skull
L'Inhumation précipitée (The Premature Burial), 1854
De Vries, André. Brussels: A Cultural and Literary History. Signal Books, 2003.
Murray, Christopher John. “Wiertz, Antoine Joseph.” Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760–1850, vol. 1, Taylor & Francis, 2004, pp. 1219–20.
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