Egide Charles Gustave Wappers

Egide Charles Gustave, Baron Wappers (23 August 1803 Antwerp – 6 December 1874 Paris), better known as Gustave Wappers, was a Belgian painter.

Biography
He studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, and during 1826 in Paris. The Romantic movement with its new ideas about art and politics was happening in France. Wappers was the first Belgian artist to use this form.  His first painting, "The Devotion of the Burgomaster of Leiden," appeared at the right time.  It had much success in the Brussels Salon during 1830, the year of the Belgian Revolution.

Wappers was invited to the court at Brussels. In 1832 the city of Antwerp made him Professor of Painting.

He showed his masterpiece, "Episode of the Belgian Revolution of 1830" at the Antwerp Salon in 1834. He was then made painter to Leopold, King of the Belgians. At the death of Matthieu-Ignace Van Brée in 1839 he was raised to director of the Antwerp Academy. One of his students was Ford Madox Brown, another was the Czech history painter Karel Javůrek.

He has many works.  Some of them in traditional devotional modes, while others show the Romantic view of history.

After retiring as director of the Antwerp Academy, he lived in 1853 in Paris.  He died in 1873.

References

Other websites


Category:1803 births
Category:1874 deaths
Category:Belgian nobility
Category:Belgian painters
Category:Flemish painters
Category:People from Antwerp
Category:Burials at Montmartre Cemetery, Paris