Ferdinand Willaert - Portrait of farmer with cap - Sold

Frame: Fabric covered bar frame
Carrier: Wooden stretcher frame Condition: Good Signature: F Willaert bottom Auction value: €400 to €600 Insurance value: € 1,200 (Replacement value of purchase from art dealer)
Ferdinand Willaert (Ghent, January 15, 1861 - Ghent, June 30, 1938) was a Flemish painter who was active at the end of the nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth.
He was the son of Charles-Louis Willaert, a decorator and portrait painter, and he was the eldest in the family of thirteen children. His brothers Arthur (1875-1942) and Raphaël Robert Willaert (1878-1949) were also painters. He received his training at the Academy in Ghent, with Theodoor Caneel and Louis Tytgadt. At the age of twenty-three in 1884, he became a teacher at the academy himself. From 1887 to 1890 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris. Ferdinand Willaert was an avid traveler and regularly stayed in the south, which had a clear impact on his style. In 1887 he went with A. Marcette to Spain and Morocco, where he discovered real light.[3] Also between 1890 and 1892 he traveled to Morocco with his friends Albert Lebourg and Ignacio Zuloaga. On his return he exhibited his works on Tangier at the Cercle artistique et littéraire de Gand which became the beginning of his artistic breakthrough. In 1893 he became a member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris and in 1907 he became secretary of the circle. He then also became a member of the Paris Société du Salon d'Automne and of the Société Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. In 1899 he became a member of the jury of the Belgian Salons, and in that capacity he was involved in the design of various salons in Ghent, Antwerp and Brussels. It is from then on that he started participating in foreign exhibitions in Turkey, France, the Netherlands, Germany, England, Italy, Spain, Russia, Egypt and the United States, where he was awarded several times. In 1901 he was appointed director of the Academy in Dendermonde, a position he would hold until 1934. Ferdinand Willaert was married for the first time to Léontine Van Loo in 1893. After the death of his first wife in 1904, he married again on March 21, 1908 to Valentine Fontan from the south of France,[4] daughter of the painter Joseph-Auguste Fontan and herself an artist who painted still lifes, flowers, interiors, portraits, and scenes with figures. They were located at Drabstraat 7 in Ghent. The couple had a daughter named Marguerite in 1918. After their marriage, they spent the holidays at Valentine's birthplace in Magnan in the Gers department in southwestern France.[2] Ferdinand Willaert became a knight in the Order of the Crown and an officer in the Order of Leopold. After his death he was buried at the Campo Santo in Sint-Amandsberg.