Men on Bridge over Canal, Belgium

Location

Country: Belgium
City: Brussels
Place: British Embassy, UK representation to the EU & UK delegation to NATO

A man pushes a cart across a red and grey stone bridge, in the foreground to the right. At the opposite end, two men are in conversation, wrapped up in coats and wearing caps. Viewed diagonally, the bridge leads on to Brussels’ Rue Ducale, captured here in the 1920s with the local neo-Renaissance architecture (style active 1860–1914) typical of the period.

Ferdinand-Jean Luigini was known for both his large colour aquatints – as is this work – and for his watercolours. The scholar F.L. Leipnik wrote in 1924: ‘a brilliant watercolour artist, [Luigini] succeeds in lending his etchings the fascination of glowing pictures. The deep rich tones are obtained by very careful biting. His style varies with his subject. Some of his plates ... show the broad sweep of the painter's brush bent upon rendering the atmosphere of large spaces. ... His most successful plates portray the autumnal aspects of Flemish landscape’.

The French painter Ferdinand-Jean Luigini was born into an artistic family, including his father Alexandre Luigini (1850-1906), a leading composer of ballets and operas. Luigini studied in Paris with the Belgian poet and art critic Emile Verhaeren (1855–1916). He began exhibiting his landscapes and architectural renderings in Paris in 1892 with the Salon des Artistes Francais. His works were regularly exhibited in London, Brussels, Amsterdam and New York.

Places

Belgium

Subjects

topography, townscape/cityscape, man, woman, railing, canal, bridge (urban), house, window

Materials & Techniques

etching, colour etching, aquatint

Artist

Ferdinand-Jean Luigini (1870 - 1943)

Title

Men on Bridge over Canal, Belgium

Date

Medium

Colour etching and aquatint

Dimensions

height: 60.50 cm, width: 46.30 cm

Acquisition

Presented by Sir Nigel Ronald, January 1954

Inscription

below image: 29 / FJ. Luigini

GAC number

15802