Charles Mertens

[4] After initially training as a goldsmith in his father's workshop, he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp from 1876 to 1885.

[6] The association was a Secessionist group which aimed to organise annual exhibitions of the work of its members outside the traditional Salons in which mainly Academic art was shown.

Other members included artists such as Emile Claus (then still living in Antwerp), Edouard de Jans, Henri De Smeth, Edgar Farasyn, Maurice Hagemans, Frans Hens, Evert Larock, Romain Looymans, Henry Luyten, Henry Rul, Leo Van Aken, Louis Van Engelen, Piet Verhaert and Theodoor Verstraete.

In these exhibitions, well-known artists such as Albert Baertsoen, Hubert Bellis, Franz Binjé, Albéric Collin, Adriaan Jozef Heymans, Fernand Khnopff, Max Liebermann, Constantin Meunier, Isidore Meyers, Jan Stobbaerts, Alexander Struys, Gustave Vanaise and Guillaume Van Strydonck participated.

On 1 March 1905, he was one of the founders in Antwerp of the association Kunst van Heden/L'Art contemporain, which grouped visual artists, art critics Pol De Mont, Arthur Cornette, Emmanuel de Bom, Paul Buschmann, among others) and art patrons such as Frans, Charles and Louis Franck, H. Fester, Frederic Speth and Cléomir Jussiant.

[1] In his early period from 1883 to 1890 Mertens found much popular appreciation with mostly small paintings of genre scenes.

[5] He was influenced by the Belgian painters Emile Claus and Théo van Rysselberghe who painted in a late-impressionist or neo-impressionist style which devotes great attention to light effects and is referred to as luminism.

The composition is dominated by the decorative rhythm of the mooring poles leading into the background and the embroidered jacket and headdress of the stoically resolute female figure.

The works depict the artist at work in his creative space in which the traditional ornaments and utensils of his artistic production are arranged: cabinets with carvings, a skull, a bust, rich fabrics draped over the furniture and a portrait in the style of Rembrandt on the wall.

This stands in contrast to Henri De Braekeleer who in his studio views produced around the same period shows the painter from the back situated in a work space which is only summarily evoked.