International studio (16.1902)

E. T. Van Hove


<lTHE AWAKENING OF JESUS5’—CENTRAL PANEL OF A TRIPTYCH

BY E. T. VAN HOVE

the Royal Academy of his native city, he started
the battle of life in the atelier of a painter on glass.
Making the most of this experience, he passed on
to Paris, where he worked for a time at fan-paint-
ing, and entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Next
we find him in the studio of Cabanel, the wise
master whose principle it was to guide the
natural trend of a pupil, and who sent forth
into the art - world men like Bastien-Lepage,
Besnard, Chartran, Jean Veber, Carriere, and
Edmond van Hove, each strong in the strength^
of his own individuality. Here our artist not
only learned execution, simplicity, and decision
as a draughtsman, but knowledge of truth, i.e.,
the seizing of facts and the ordering of them
by force of intellect so as to make them memor-
able and beautiful to the visible and inward eye
of all who behold. According to the theory of
Mr. Ruskin he grasped the first merit of manipula-
tion, “ that delicate, ceaseless expression of a touch,
which makes every hair’s-breadth of importance,
and every gradation full of meaning.”
While yet in Paris Mr. van Hove may

have caught his ideal from the glorious severity
and accuracy of detail of Holbein, and on his
return to Bruges, with the Grand Prix de Rome, he
was able, with a more cultured mind, to give
himself enthusiastically to the study of Mending
and the Van Eycks. At any rate these three
afterwards exercised a powerful influence over his
subjects and the rendering ,of them. His first
picture, a Head of John the Baptist, was accepted by
the Museum at Antwerp. Next we find The Faience
Pamter well received, while The Goldsmith, The
Miser Counting his Money, and The Banker, found
their way to England.
His first important picture, which the writer saw
in progress, and afterwards at the Paris Exhibition
(it having the year before gained a medal at
the Salon), was a triptych, Alchimie, Sotrellerie,
Scolastique—quaint in subject, beautiful in draw-
ing, and subdued in colour. Two distinctly
fifteenth - century savants are trying to discover
on the nude figure of a girl sorceress the exact
spot where, according to tradition, the Devil is
located. This picture was sold in Berlin.
265