19th century painting of a shepherdess s w. goats, cows & donkey - Louis Robbe (1806-1897)- 20½ x 23¾"

This rather somber nineteenth-century rural landscape painting by Belgian painter Louis-Marie-Dominique-Romain Robbe, born on November 17, 1806 in Kortrijk and died on May 2, 1887 in Brussels. He was a painter and engraver and also a lawyer. Oil on canvas with a small repair that is visible on the back of the canvas. Signed on the bottom right. The frame is in good condition.

Extract translated from the Benezit guide:

Born November 17, 1806 in Kortrijk. Died May 2, 1887 Brussels. XIX" century. Belgian. Painter of animals, animated landscapes, engraver. Older brother of Henri Robbe. He was a law student at the University of Louvain. Lawyer in Brussels, he was for a time judge attached to the Ministry of Finance, he was also at the head of a prosperous business firm. Despite these heavy burdens, he was able to do some artistic studies, with Jean-Baptiste d Jonghe and especially Eugène Verboeckhoven, from whom he held a smooth technique with a “badger” model. Although he began to exhibit at the age of twenty-four, he did not seriously concern himself with painting until 1833. He settled in Brussels in 1840. A gifted and cultivated man, he protected Charles de Groux, the instigator of the realist movement in Belgium. Having lost his wife, then his son, he fell into a painful neurasthenia.

In 1837 he obtained a medal in Brussels; in 1855, same distinction in Paris for the Universal Exhibition. In 1843 he was made a knight of the Order of Leopold, an officer in 1863; in 1845 he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. His multiple occupations left him little time for the campaign. He was criticized for lacking an intimate knowledge of animals in their natural setting. It seems clear that for him, his paintings with animals had to fulfill the role of beautiful decorations, well composed for the pleasure of the public, and did not aspire to be veristic documents on rural life. For this purpose, he was sometimes helped by painter friends who took charge of the landscape or the characters.