Oil on mahogany panel, signed lower left “WillemsF.”
Dimensions with frame: 68x60 cm (48x40 cm)
Florent Willems (or Florent Willems van Edeghem) (Liège 1823 – 1905 Neuilly-sur-Seine) was a Belgian painter and art conservator. He successfully created genre scenes depicting several figures in interiors, rendered in the style of 17th-century Flemish and Dutch Baroque. He was particularly prized for his ability to realistically render the fabrics of the figures’ clothing, which earned him the nickname “the modern Ter Borch.” He studied art at the Academy in Mechelen. He then moved to Brussels, where financial circumstances forced him to work for the art dealer Héris as an art conservator. He copied and restored old paintings for this art dealer. At just 18 years old, he caught the attention of Hamilton Seymour, the English ambassador. Seymour commissioned him to paint a portrait depicting himself with his wife and children. He made his debut at the Brussels Salon in 1842 with the paintings *A Music Lesson* and *A Scene in the Guardhouse*. King Leopold I of Belgium purchased the first painting. Later, he exhibited regularly at the salons in Paris and Brussels. His works at the Paris Salon in 1844 earned him third-class gold medals. During this time, he settled in Paris, where his paintings enjoyed considerable popularity during the Second French Empire. In 1849, another Belgian artist, Alfred Stevens, joined him in Paris; Stevens lived with him and worked for him in his studio. Willems’s interest in depicting women in interiors clearly influenced Stevens’s choice of subjects. For three paintings exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1853, he was awarded the rank of Knight of the French Legion of Honor. Two of the three works he exhibited at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1855 were acquired by Emperor Napoleon III of France and the Empress, respectively. At that time, he was also awarded the rank of Officer of the Belgian Order of Leopold.
