Frans Verhas 1827-1897

Frans Verhas 1827-1897

This significant work by Verhas, painted during the Franco-Prussian War,
1870-1871, features two elegantly attired ladies consulting over the movement
of the armies in France. While the figure on the left reads the reports in the daily
journal her companion marks the movement of the armies with push pins on
a large detailed map on the wall. While Verhas was celebrated across Europe
for his virtuosity of figures in sumptuous environs, it is rare that the events of the outside world are depicted.

Having trained with his father, he studied in Brussels before settling permanently at Schaerbeek in 1867. In Brussels he specialized almost exclusively in producing genre paintings of bourgeois subjects. His compositions were skilfully executed and he showed a keen eye for detail, portraying sumptuous interiors decorated with tapestries, satins, animal pelts and marble as a backdrop to playing children and elegant women dressed in crinolines, or striking aristocratic poses: for example The Lion (1874; Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.) and the Inconsolable Woman (1878; Antwerp, Kon. Mus. S. Kst.). He also painted historical subjects, which he treated with a powerful sense of realism (e.g. Louis XIV before Dendermonde in 1667 , 1881; and the League of Noblemen ; both Dendermonde, Stadhuis), and executed portraits (e.g. Mariam Van Duyse , 1852; Dendermonde, Vrouwekerk).