Pierre Olivier Joseph Coomans
Pierre Olivier Joseph Coomans was a painter and illustrator born in Brussels, United Kingdom of the Netherlands on June 28, 1816. He was the son of Josse-Joseph Coomans, inspector of registration and estates and author of novels and poetry, and Cécile Lesprit. He was known as one of Belgium's most celebrated 19th-century painters of historic subjects, genre scenes, and landscapes.
Early career
Already a talented draftsman at the age of 16, Coomans studied painting under Pieter van Hanselaere in Ghent, exhibiting "A Young Greek Shepherd" at the first National Fine Arts Exhibition. Then he attended the academy at Antwerp and studied painting under the noted historical romanticists, Nicaise de Keyser and Gustave Wappers. At the age of 19, he illustrated the History of Belgium written by his older brother with fifty-two engravings and worked on other historical titles as well. He also authored a novel based on Algerian history entitled Gzana. He married Zoé van Male de Brachene.A Royal Commission and military service
In 1843, Queen Louise-Marie of Orleans sent him to Algeria to follow the French army in Kabylie. He was attached to the General Staff of Marshal Thomas-Robert Bugeaud and met the military painter Horace Vernet there. His three stays in Algeria introduced Orientalism into his work focusing on North African landscapes, Arab portraits, Algerian dancers and battle scenes. He exhibited his Algerian subjects at art fairs in Antwerp and Brussels.In 1847 he married the widow Zoé van Male de Brachene, whose husband, Captain Prosper Renoz, had died in Algeria. His son Oscar was born in 1848 but his wife died shortly after the birth, plunging the artist in a deep depression. Although his work, Attila's Last Charge in the Plains of Châlons-sur-Marne had garnered a vermeil medal in Brussels that year he did not paint for two years but traveled to Italy and Palestine.
Then in 1854 and 1855, he joined his military friends from Algeria and served General Aimable Pélissier in the Crimean War as a military painter. During this period he painted historical medieval subjects and portraits. He worked with models both in studios and in exterior settings and his portraits, featuring exotic costumes, jewelry, and dusky sensual looks yet produced with a subtlety of tone and color were greatly prized by European collectors. He also painted children at play, a popular theme in late nineteenth-century European and American Art as childhood was studied in terms of its significance to personal development and education.