Jan (Jan-Baptiste) Stobbaerts (
Antwerpen,
18 maart 1838 -
Schaarbeek,
25 november 1914) was een
Vlaams kunstschilder en
graficus. Hij werkte in een
naturalistische stijl, later met invloeden vanuit het
impressionisme.
Stobbaerts was de zoon van een timmerman. Hij trad in de leer bij dierschilder Emmanuel Noterman en volgde avondlessen aan de Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten van Antwerpen. Daar ontmoette hij Henri de Braekeleer, die zijn levenslange vriend zou blijven. Beide schilders kregen ook adviezen van de romantische kunstschilder Henri Leys, die een oom van De Braekeleer was.
Stobbaaerts huwde in 1868 en bleef aanvankelijk wonen en werken in Antwerpen, van waaruit hij werkte in de nabije landschappelijke omgeving en De Kempen. In 1886 verhuisde hij naar Brussel, dat toen gold als het centrum van de Belgische schilderkunst. Zijn succes nam direct toe, hij verkocht veel werk via de vooraanstaande kunsthandelaar Henri Van Cutsem en exposeerde bij Les XX. Vaak werkte hij in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, bij de rivier de Woluwe.
Stobaaerts schilderde vooral landschappen en genrewerken, veelal gesitueerd op het Belgische platteland, vaak met boeren en hun beesten of ambachtslieden aan het werk. Zijn stijl was naturalistisch, anekdotisch ook, later met invloeden vanuit het impressionisme, zich uitend in een lossere penseelvoering en lichtere kleurstelling. Typerend is zijn gebruik van sfumato. Aan het einde van zijn carrière zocht hij ook toenadering tot het symbolisme, waarbij hij regelmatig koos voor mythologische thema's.
Stobbaerts werd in 1900 opgenomen in het Franse Legioen van Eer en in 1911 onderscheiden met de Leopoldsorde. Hij overleed in 1914, 76 jaar oud. Veel van zijn werken zijn te zien in het Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België te Antwerpen.
Jan Stobbaerts or Jan-Baptist Stobbaerts (Antwerp, 18 March 1838 – Schaerbeek, 25 November 1914) was a Belgian painter and printmaker.[1] He is known for his scenes with animals, landscapes, genre scenes and portraits or artists. With his dark-brown studio tones and forceful depiction of trivial subjects, Stobbaerts was a pioneer of Realism and 'autochthonous' Impressionism in Belgium.
Jan Stobbaerts was born in Antwerp as the son of the carpenter Maarten Jozef Stobbarts and his wife Johanna Rosalie Pardon. Orphaned at the age of 6, Stobbaerts was cared for by various poor family members and remained unschooled. When he was 8 he became an apprentice of a joiner and later changed to another boss who specialized in making covers of tobacco boxes. Later he worked as an assistant of a decorative painter. He started to paint his own compositions, which he sold on the street.[3] He became a pupil of the animal painter Emmanuel Noterman in 1856.[4]
Stobbaerts contributed his first painting to the salon of Brussels in 1857. His submission to the salon was received well by the critics and was purchased by a British buyer. He started to contribute to all salons in Belgium from that time onwards.
In his early works, Stobbaerts worked from nature and he was thus one of the pioneers of non-academic painting. In 1859 he started attending the evening classes at the Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp. Here he met Henri de Braekeleer who became a lifelong friend and fellow rebel against academism in art. Their rebellious attitude caused both of them to be expelled from the Academy. The uncle of de Braekeleer was Henri Leys, the leading Romantic painter in Belgium at the time. Leys took it upon himself to assist his nephew and Stobbaerts in the continuation of their training.[3]
Stobbaerts married in 1868 and he led a relatively sedentary life in his native Antwerp. He never left his country and only traveled in the immediate vicinity of his residence to paint the surrounding landscape of the Campine.[4] In 1886 Stobbaerts moved to Brussels. In this city he was recognized as an important artist unlike in his native Antwerp where he often had conflicts with local art critics and organizers of exhibitions.[5] His composition entitled The stable of the old farm of Cruyninghen, which had been refused for the salon of Antwerp in 1885, was purchased by the Belgian state the next year for the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.[4][6] In Brussels Stobbaerts was feted by 'Les XX' (The Twenty), an association of 20 progressive artists in Brussels.[7] Les XX invited Stobbaerts to participate in the salon of 1884 organised by them.[8] Leading art collectors in Belgium such as Henri Van Cutsem started collecting his work. While living in Schaerbeek near Brussels, he painted scenes in the Ossegem neighborhood of Sint-Jans-Molenbeek and around the Woluwe river.[5]
Stobbaerts received various officials awards including the award by the French state of the Légion d'Honneur in 1900 and by the Belgian state of a knighthood in the Order of Leopold in 1911.[4][9]
Jan Stobbaert's grandson Marcel Stobbaerts (1899 - 1979) was a successful artist.
Stobbaerts painted pictures of artisans, landscapes, animals and still lifes. He occasionally painted portraits and at the end of his career he created a few history and symbolistic paintings.
His preferred subjects were low-life paintings of farm yards and barns. He was one of the first artists to start open-air painting in Belgium and he was one of the pioneers of Realism. The naturalistic realism of his composition Slaughtering caused a stir when it was displayed at the Antwerp salon of 1872. The painting shows a butcher cutting the throat of a cow in the front of the scene and the blood flowing out into a container. Stobbaerts demonstrated in this work his rejection of the idealistic subjects, which were common among the academic artists working in Belgium at the time, and that the depiction of a craft was a sufficient ground to select it as a subject for a painting. The Slaughtering was followed by many depictions of livestock farming including cattle and horses.[2]
While in his early works he painted scenes with pets in kitchen interiors in which the genre and anecdotal elements prevailed, from 1880 onwards stables and barns became a dominant theme in his work.[5] The compositions in this period were painted with an almost photographic realism.[8] His sober monochrome palette developed to a more balanced color scheme and he gave more attention to the effect of light.
Around 1890, Stobbaerts' style underwent a considerable change likely under the influence of his discovery of Impressionism and his personal search for resolving the problem of light. Stobbaerts abandoned the detailed realism in favour of a very personal sfumato of light. His style became velvety, his brushwork looser and the paint more fluid. His paintings of the 1890s depicting scenes around the river Woluwe were made with an opaque, somewhat transparent paste. The artist concentrated on the effect of light and the forms, while they remained recognizable, became less clear as if seen through a soft focus lens. The subject matter itself became less important.[8]
In his later works he abandoned his realistic themes and started to paint scenes inspired by Symbolism.[5] An example is the Bath of roses, which shows a nymph-like woman who submerges in a bath of roses and remains unreal and impossible to grasp.[11]
Stobbaerts is the author of several etchings, which deal with a similar subject matter as his paintings.
Jean Stobbaerts, né à Anvers le 18 mars 1838 et mort à Schaerbeek le 25 novembre 1914, est un peintre et graveur connu pour ses tableaux d'animaux, de paysages, de portraits. Stobbaerts était un pionnier du réalisme et de l'impressionnisme « autochtone » en Belgique.
Fils de Martinus Josephus Stobbaerts, menuisier, né à Anvers en 1814, et de Joanna Rosalie Pardon, née à Anvers en 1816, il est né à Anvers le 18 mars 1838 et fut déclaré à l'état-civil sous les prénoms de Joannes Baptiste.
Orphelin dès l'âge de six ans, il fut confié à la garde de divers membres de sa famille, fort pauvre, et ne fréquenta pas l'école. À l'âge de huit ans déjà, il fut apprenti chez un menuisier-ébéniste, et plus tard, chez un autre patron, il se spécialisa dans les couvercles de boites à tabac. Ensuite, il fut l'assistant d'un peintre décoratif. Il peint alors ses propres compositions qu'il vendait en rue. En 1856, il devint l'élève d'Emmanuel Noterman, un peintre animalier.
Il a commencé à peindre en 1855 et il a exposé pour la première fois à Bruxelles en 1857.
Schaerbeek a nommé une de ses artères avenue Jan Stobbaerts.
Parmi ses disciples figure Georges Van Zevenberghen qui lui était apparenté.
The
cabinet card was a style of photograph which was widely used for photographic portraiture after 1870. It consisted of a thin photograph mounted on a card typically measuring 108 by 165 mm (4 1⁄4 by 6 1⁄2 inches).
The carte de visite was quickly replaced by the larger cabinet card. In the early 1860s, both types of photographs were essentially the same in process and design. Both were most often albumen prints; the primary difference being the cabinet card was larger and usually included extensive logos and information on the reverse side of the card to advertise the photographer's services. However, later into its popularity, other types of papers began to replace the albumen process. Despite the similarity, the cabinet card format was initially used for landscape views before it was adopted for portraiture.
Some cabinet card images from the 1890s have the appearance of a black-and-white photograph in contrast to the distinctive sepia toning notable in the albumen print process. These photographs have a neutral image tone and were most likely produced on a matte collodion, gelatin or gelatin bromide paper.
Sometimes images from this period can be identified by a greenish cast. Gelatin papers were introduced in the 1870s and started gaining acceptance in the 1880s and 1890s as the gelatin bromide papers became popular. Matte collodion was used in the same period. A true black-and-white image on a cabinet card is likely to have been produced in the 1890s or after 1900. The last cabinet cards were produced in the 1920s, even as late as 1924.
Owing to the larger image size, the cabinet card steadily increased in popularity during the second half of the 1860s and into the 1870s, replacing the carte de visite as the most popular form of portraiture. The cabinet card was large enough to be easily viewed from across the room when typically displayed on a cabinet, which is probably why they became known as such in the vernacular. However, when the renowned Civil War photographer, Mathew Brady, first started offering them to his clientele towards the end of 1865, he used the trademark "Imperial Carte-de-Visite."[1] Whatever the name, the popular print format joined the photograph album as a fixture in the late 19th-century Victorian parlor.
The reverse side of the card as seen above.
Ironically, early into its introduction, the cabinet card ushered in the temporary demise of the photographic album which had come into existence commercially with the carte de visite. Photographers began employing artists to retouch photographs (by altering the negative before making the print) to hide facial defects revealed by the new format. Small stands and photograph frames for the table top replaced the heavy photograph album. Photo album manufacturers responded by producing albums with pages primarily for cabinet cards with a few pages in the back reserved for the old family carte de visite prints.
For nearly three decades after the 1860s, the commercial portraiture industry was dominated by the carte de visite and cabinet card formats. In the decade before 1900 the number and variety of card photograph styles expanded in response to declining sales. Manufactures of standardized card stock and print materials hoped to stimulate sales and retain public interest in card photographs. However, as with all technological innovations, the public increasingly demanded outdoor and candid photographs with enlarged prints which they could frame or smaller unmounted snapshots they could collect in scrapbooks.
In no small part owing to the immense popularity of the affordable Kodak Box Brownie camera, first introduced in 1900, the public increasingly began taking their own photographs, and thus the popularity of the cabinet card declined.[2]
