Theodoor Verstraete

His father was the second conductor of the 'Nationaal Toneel" (National Theatre) in Antwerp while his mother, Julie Verstraete-Lacquet, was a popular actress.

[4] Verstraete initially showed an inclination for music and accompanied his parents on their theatre tours including a trip in 1860 to the Netherlands.

[2] In the graphics department, headed by Jozef Bal, Verstraete developed his drawing skills and also learned the etching technique, which he would use throughout his career.

The classmates of Verstraete included Emile Claus, Jef Lambeaux, Edgard Farasyn and Henri Houben.

Van Cutsem encouraged Verstraete to travel to various places in the Netherlands such as Hansweert, Leiden, Utrecht and Schoore in Zeeland, where he etched and painted.

Theodoor Verstraete also spent time in Blankenberge on the Belgian coast where Van Cutsem owned a villa and invited his artist friends to visit.

While the relationship with Van Cutsem resulted in a considerable improvement of Verstraete's finances, he was in 1893 struck by a stroke, which possibly led to blindness and inability to speak.

[4][5] The destitute Verstraete could thereafter only survive financially through the support of his patron Henri Van Cutsem, who gave him after 1904 a monthly stipend.

The retrospective exhibitions of 1895 in Zaal Verlat and in 1906 organized by Kunst van Heden (Art of Today), which also included works by Willem Linnig the Younger, were also a welcome source of income.

[6] Verstraete was part of a group of Belgian painters who took refuge from the complexity of urban life to look for simplicity, purity and naturalness in the pre-industrial countryside.

Some of these artists, such as Frans Van Leemputten and Verstraete who both worked in the Campine, depicted the rural reality from their own urban background and viewpoint.

[10] These melancholic early works, such as After the funeral (1876–1880, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium), express in their gloomy atmosphere the poverty of the peasants and their submissiveness to the land.

[6] The works of this period show subjects that allowed Verstraete to give free rein to his urge for poetic dreaminess and sentimentality.

[6] The later work of Verstraete abandoned its sentimental touch and gave more objective, neutral depictions of some of the subjects he treated earlier.