Asselbergs Alphonse ( Brussels 1839 – 1916 ) - ' Landscape In The Ardennes '

Alphonse Asselbergs
1839 – Brussels – 1916
Belgian Painter

'Landscape in the Ardennes'

This painting depicts the small village of Achouffe, located in the municipality of Houffalize in Wallonia, Belgium. The village lies within the forested Ardennes region, situated in the Bastogne district of the Luxembourg province.

Signature: signed lower left 'Alp. Asselbergs'
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: image size 60,5 x 100 cm, frame size 73,5 x 113 cm

Biography: Alphonse Asselbergs was born on June 19, 1839, in Brussels. A painter of landscapes and forest scenes, he studied with the esteemed artist and teacher Edouard Huberti from 1863.

After having led a life of travel as a trader, Asselbergs returned to the Belgian countryside in 1867, settling in the Tervuren region. There, he devoted himself to landscape painting alongside notable artists such as Hippolyte Boulenger, Edouard Huberti, Joseph Coosemans, and Théodore Baron.

In 1868, he co-founded the Société Libre des Beaux-Arts.

From 1873 to 1874, he traveled and painted in North Africa with the watercolourist Arthur Bouvier, producing a series of Orientalist canvases. Although exhibited widely, these works did not achieve commercial success and remained in his studio at the time of his death.

After his return, Asselbergs lived near the artists’ colony in Genk and made excursions to the forests of Fontainebleau in France. Between 1875 and 1877, he worked in the Barbizon region with students of Théodore Rousseau.

In 1877, he moved back to Brussels, where he actively painted in the surrounding countryside, the Ardennes, and the Campine region. He maintained a studio with a distinctive round tower on a street that now bears his name. Asselbergs also made short study trips to France and Italy and exhibited at the Salon de Paris during the 1880s.

In 1881, he was named an Officer of the Order of Leopold, Belgium’s oldest and highest order of merit, receiving a second commission in 1896.

Alphonse Asselbergs died in Uccle in 1916.

His work is represented in the Groeningemuseum in Bruges, which houses his 1920 painting “La Mare aux Fées” at Fontainebleau, as well as in public collections across Belgium, including Antwerp, Brussels, Liège, Ixelles, Mons, Tournai, Verviers, and Charleroi, and in France.