Emiel Rommelaere 1873-1961

 My terrace when empty; not sure that guests want
their images plastered over my blog!!

The recent MA Festival in early August, as usual brought a number of friends to Brugge, two to stay with me and the rest scattered around the Egg. I used to put on a lunch for ‘the boys’ as I call them, despite there being one or two girls among them! But as the energy edges down, I resorted first to brunch for three years and then, this August, to a tea party on the terrace. It was a lovely sunlit scene with everyone managing to find a space among the plants and little trees claiming first place. I was doing relatively little except a spot of ‘gracious hostessing’ when Joachim, a long-term friend met through my husband Eric almost certainly on my first visit to the Festival [then the Festival Van Vlaanderen] in 1989, suddenly emerged with a giant parcel festooned with curly ribbons. A birthday present no less, and totally unexpected, from five of those present. Joachim said that I had remarked a year before, when looking through a book on Bruges artists, “Oh I would love a Rommelaere!” I didn’t remember at all until I eventually located the book and a full page painting by Rommelaere and the memory returned, heavily visual, as usual!

 Stedlijke Brugse Academie
Rommelaere is 2nd on left, front row.

The painting was unwrapped to my delight and much admired by all and days later, hung at last by the chief conspirator and his husband. It is quite dark but SO redolent of the area leading up to the doors of the Beguinage and I love it and what it represents. I have found a mere skeleton of facts about Emiel online though there are five pages on him in my Dutch book on 19th and 20th century painters of the Bruges School. Emiel [always known by the Flemish version of his name] was born on March 27 1873, son of a policeman. He showed early artistic promise and in 1884 was enrolled at the Brugse Academie where he became a pupil of Louis De la Censerie, a famous name still in Brugge. During his student period he met and did work for, Corneille Leegenhoek, a local restaurateur whose daughter, Gabrielle, he eventually married on 27 April, 1897. Before his marriage, in 1891 he attended the Academie voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp and eventually moved on to the Hoger [Higher] Instituut voor Schone Kunsten where he became a pupil and friend of Albert de Vriendt. He was much influenced by the style of de Vriendt and by 1895 he had accepted a Professorship at the Brugse Academie and resolved to return permanently to life in Brugge. He was both a painter in oils and a water colourist.

 A View on The Predikherenrei by Rommelaere

Rommelaere painted picturesque local scenes many times and still lifes while his landscapes in particular were influenced by the Impressionists. He worked with de Vriendt and painted a portrait of the Baron de Bethune in the Gothic Hall in the Stadhuis in his youth and there is at least one painting of his, Achterbuurt in Brugge 1925 in the Groeningemuseum. One notable painting, Grandmother’s Feast, earned a Gold Medal for him in a 1904 exhibition in Saint Louis in the United States. He participated in many exhibitions in the U.S., Mexico, London, Amsterdam, Cologne, Metz and Paris during his life. In 1908 he purchased a big house on Beenhouwersstraat where he installed a large atelier to provide ample room for both him and his daughter, Dora, also a skilled draughtswoman, to work. He spent many happy and productive years in this atelier until ill health forced his retirement at 77 [1950] when he went to live in Westkapelle.

 Louis De La Censerie 1838-1909

 A Bruges Mill