Eugène Verboeckhoven - The Bull And The Shepherdess

Eugène VERBOECKHOVEN Warneton, 1798 – Schaerbeek, 1881 Oil on wood panel 42 x 33.5 cm (58 x 50 cm with the frame) Signed, dated and located lower right “EJ Verboeckhoven / 1826 / à Gand” Belgian animal painter and watercolourist , Eugène Verboeckhoven was a pupil of Balthazar Ommeganck. He exhibited in Ghent from 1820. He was also director general of the museums of Brussels. He liked to represent animals in a countryside landscape, first cows and bulls in the 1820s and then horses, donkeys and sheep as well as goats from the 1840s. His style is related to the realistic tradition by his master Ommeganck with a rare attention to detail and a truly miniaturist craftsmanship. Verboeckoven is one of the best Belgian animal painters of the first half of the 19th century. The delicacy of his touch and his colors made Baudelaire say that his art was "astonishing, glassy, distressing enough to make Meissonnier, Landseer and Horace Vernet envious"!