Frans Verhas

Frans Verhas or Franz Verhas (Dendermonde, 1827 – Schaerbeek, 1897)Franz Verhas
at the Netherlands Institute for Art History was a Belgian painter. He is known for his portraits and genre scenes of women and children set in luxurious bourgeois homes. His elaborate salon interiors are characterised by their rich abundance and the display of a wide range of textures, such as tapestries, satins, furs, marbles and metals. Frans Verhas also painted animals, history paintings and still lifes.''Belgian artists: la cote des artistes belges'', Arts Antiques Auctions nv, 2004Frans Verhas, ‘’Bouquet of roses’’
at Opus Mirabilis

Life

Frans Verhas was born in Dendermonde as the son of Emmanuel Verhas. His father was a painter who for twenty years was a teacher at the local Academy and also served as a director of that Academy. Frans received his initial art training from his father along with his younger brother Jan (or Jan Frans). His brother became a very successful artist.Alain Jacobs, ''Verhas family''
at Oxford Art Online
Verhas studied initially at the Academy of Fine Arts in his hometown Dendermonde and then at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp. One of his teachers at the Antwerp Academy was Nicaise de Keyser, a painter of mainly history paintings and portraits and one of the key figures in the Belgian Romantic-historical school of painting. Verhas settled in Schaerbeek in 1867.Alain Jacobs, ''Frans Verhas''
in: Dictionnaire des peintres belges

Frans Verhas lived and worked for various periods in Paris in the late 1870s and during the 1880s. He was a close friend of the French writer Arsène Houssaye, for whom he executed decorative frescoes in his residence on avenue de Friedland in Paris.Revue universelle: recueil documentaire universel et illustré, Volume 7, Georges Moreau Larousse., 1897, p. 90 The decorative program consisted of pastiches of the Flemish and Venetian masters.

Frans Verhas died on 22 November 1897 in Schaerbeek.

Work

Frans Verhas was known for his portraits of women and genre paintings set in luxurious bourgeois homes. He also painted animals, some history paintings and still lifes. He created a number of frescoes with history themes in residences during his stay in Paris in the 1870s and 1880s.

His principal subject matter and style of painting was influenced by the Belgian painter Alfred Stevens, who had made a career as a society painter of elegant women in Paris. He and his brother Jan Verhas were known for their paintings of small family scenes depicting the joyous hubbub of girls and boys with their perfect transparent and pearly skins and controlled facial expressions. Other Belgian artists who were also followers of Alfred Stevens included Gustave Léonard de Jonghe and Charles Baugniet. Like Frans Verhas they evoked the vision of women adorned and painted in a manner that accentuates their coquettishness and seductiveness, like adulated idols.Camille Lemonnier, ''L'école belge de peinture 1830–1905''
G. Van Oest & C, 1906, pp. 89–90

Frans Verhas' cleverly constructed compositions treat with an extreme precision the rich interiors, enriched with satins and goblins, skins of animals and marbles that frame the elegant crinoline worn by the female sitters. He was particularly skilled in the rendering of the textures of various materials such as satin, marble and other precious materials in his works.

Verhas received various commissions for religious paintings for churches in his hometown Dendermonde and for historical paintings for the City hall of Dendermonde. His history paintings treat their subjects with a powerful realism.

File:Franz Verhas (1832-1894) De leeuw (1874) MSK Gent 22-11-2015 11-58-03.JPG, ''The lion''
File:Frans Verhas - Lady in a kimono adjusting flowers in a vase.jpg, ''Young woman in a kimono''
File:Frans Verhas - Reading in the living room.JPG, ''Reading in the living room''
File:Frans Verhas - Inconsolable.png, ''Inconsolable''

Notes

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Verhas, Frans
1827 births
1897 deaths
Flemish portrait painters
Belgian portrait painters
Belgian genre painters
Orientalist painters
People from Dendermonde
19th-century Belgian painters
Belgian male painters
19th-century Belgian male artists