The Watsman, a painted view between Obersee and Koningsee, Upper Bavaria. Study painted in 1856 by François Roffiaen.

François Roffiaen (1820-1898): Biography

François Roffiaen's family on his father's side came from humble beginnings. The men were day laborers, masons, innkeepers or saddlers, and the women were seamstresses or lacemakers.

François Roffiaen was barely three years old when, for unknown reasons, he left to live with his paternal uncle, Joseph-Louis-Augustin, a bookseller in Namur, where he spent, as he himself noted, "the best years of his life" and where he attended the Athénée, as well as the Académie de peinture (1835-1839) under the direction of Ferninand Marinus (1808-1890). His fellow students included Louis Bonet (1822-1894), Jean-Baptiste Kindermans (1821-1876) and Joseph Quinaux (1822-1895).

He continued his artistic studies at the Académie de Bruxelles (1839-1842), notably with the famous vedutist François Bossuet (1789-1889), who taught him perspective and was an authority on landscapes and city views. He then attended the Brussels studio of Pierre-Louis Kühnen (1812-1877), a painter from Aachen who specialized in Romantic landscape painting. Roffiaen received an annual grant of 600 francs from the city of Ypres (1841-1845 or 1846). At the same time, he taught drawing at the college in Dinant.

Strongly impressed by the paintings Alexandre Calame (1810 - 1864) sent to the Belgian Salons, François Roffiaen obtained a grant for a stay in Geneva in autumn 1846 and spent six months with the master, before discovering the mountains himself. But the painter also enjoyed depicting the picturesque scenes of the Meuse and Ourthe valleys, the Scottish lochs, discovered in 1862, or the vast expanses of Limburg heather.

Classified as a Romantic painter, the quality of his workmanship, particularly in his monumental large-format paintings, is hyper-realistic, even photographic, with a dazzling finesse of finish. So much so, in fact, that some critics prefer his smaller-format "studies", with their more sensitive, less smooth brushstrokes.

Trained at the Brussels Academy (1839-42), Roffiaen soon signed excellent alpine landscapes and was already taking part in the major international Salons before joining Alexandre Calame.

His works met with great commercial success - particularly in the 1850-60s - and he was commissioned by the aristocracy of Europe and the rest of the world (Shah of Persia).

He enjoyed particular success in Belgium (the Royal House of Belgium), Great Britain and the United States. Queen Victoria asked him to visit Scotland, but the project was cancelled when Prince Albert died.

In 1869, he was made a knight of the Order of Leopold.

Celebrated during his lifetime, he is now being rediscovered. Roffiaen's work is also precise, full of realistic detail and exceptionally sensitive; his brushstrokes are shimmering yet fine, attentive to the path of the sun. Masterpieces that manage the miracle of balance to appear even more grandiose and intimate.