"family Ketelaars-du Bois" Louis Ricquier (1792-1884)

Oil on mahogany panel.
Signed lower right.
Dimensions of the work without frame: 67 cm x 77.5 cm
Dimensions including frame: 85 cm x 95 cm
Very good condition.
Louis Ricquier (ANTWERP, 1792 – PARIS, 1884) is one of the most important Belgian history painters of the first half of the 19th century. Originally from Antwerp, he studied at the Royal Academy of his native city under the direction of Mathieu-Ignace Van Brée (1773-1839) and won two first prizes there. In the footsteps of his elders – his master Van Brée, winner of the second Prix de Rome in 1797, the inhabitants of Bruges Joseph-Benoît Suvée, director of the French Academy in Rome, and François-Joseph Kinson, or the sculptor from Liège Henri- Joseph Rutwhiel – and taking advantage of the French annexation, the young artist came to Paris in 1812. Ricquier and finding Philippe Van Brée (1786-1871), the younger brother of his teacher. The following year, he presented at the Antwerp Salon a large painting painted in Paris, Androcles pulling the thorn from the lion's paw. We find him again among the participants in 1816, after the fall of the Empire and the creation of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. The artist had opted for an original subject, Fernand Cortès triumphant over Montezuma.
The support offered to Belgian artists by William II, anxious to develop the arts, enabled the painter, accompanied by his friend, Philippe Van Brée, to make a three-year trip to Italy. Leaving in 1816, the enthusiastic young people visited Florence, Rome and Naples, filling sketchbooks and soaking up the warm transalpine light.
Back from Italy, Ricquier regularly participated in the Salons of Ghent, Amsterdam and Brussels with "troubadour" works featuring characters from the Flemish Renaissance and the Golden Age: Rubens, Van Dyck, Admiral Bloys van Treslong, Jacqueline of Bavaria or the Prince of Orange. He did not forsake Paris, however, and exhibited there a Subject of the History of Christopher Columbus at the Salon of 1822. It was also in the French capital that he married in 1824 Marie-Catherine-Thérèse Van Brée, the sister by Mathieu-Ignace and Philippe. The couple ended up settling permanently in rue Saint-Lazare shortly before 1840.
His submission to the Paris Salon of 1833 includes no less than seven paintings, only landscapes from Campania and genre scenes subtitled "costumes of Italy" (nos 2012-2018). One of them, A Family of Brigands earned him a second class medal. It was acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels (inv. 157, oil on wood, 50 x 42 cm.)
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