Emile Wauters

[1] Wauters made a journey to Italy, but that the study of the old masters in no way affected his individuality was proved by The Great Nave of St. Marks (purchased by Leopold II of Belgium).

[1] His vast panorama probably the noblest and most artistic work of this class ever produced Cairo and the Banks of the Nile (1881), 380 ft. by 49 ft., executed in six months, was exhibited with extraordinary success in Brussels, Munich, and The Hague.

[1] Wauters is equally eminent as a portraitist, in his earliest period exhibiting, as in his pictures, sober qualities and subtle grip, but later on developing into the whole range of a brilliant, forceful palette, and then into brighter and more delicate colors, encouraged thereto, in his more recent work, by his adoption of pastel as a medium even for life-size portraits, mainly of ladies.

[1] His portraits, numbering over two hundred, include many of the greatest names in Belgium, France, and America (Wauters having for some years made Paris his chief home).

Among these may be named the Baron Goffinet, the Baroness Goffinet, Madame Somze (standing at a piano), Master Somze (on horseback by the sea-shore), the Princess Clementine of Belgium (Brussels Museum), Lady Edward Sassoon, Baron de Bleichroder, Princess de Ligne, Miss Lorillard, a likeness of the artist in the Dresden Museum, and M. Schollaert (president of the Chamber of Deputies) the last named an amazing example of portraiture, instinct with character and vitality.

The 6th Duke d'Ursel painted by Emile Wauters, Collection of the Belgian Senate, Brussels.