GALLAIT, LOUIS (1810-1887)

This article appears in Volume V11, Page 412 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: GAG-GEO

GALLAIT, LOUIS (1810-1887) , Belgian painter, was born at Tournay, in Hainaut, Belgium, on the 9th of May 18ro. He first studied in his native town under Hennequin. In 1832 his first picture, "

Tribute

TRIBUTE (Lat. tributurn, a stated payment, contribution)

to Caesar," won a prize at the exhibition at

Ghent

GHENT (Flem. Gent, Fr. Gand)

. He then went to Antwerp to prosecute his studies under Mathieu Ignace Van Bree, and in the following year exhibited at the Brussels Salon " Christ Healing the Blind." This picture was

purchased

PURCHASED

by subscription and placed in the cathedral at Tournay. Gallait next went to Paris, whence he sent to the Belgian Salons "Job on the Dunghill," "Montaigne Visiting Tasso in Prison"; and, in 1841, " The

Abdication

ABDICATION (Lat. abdicatio, disowning, renouncing, from ab, from, and dicare, to declare, to proclaim as not belonging to one)

of Charles V.," in the Brussels Gallery. This was hailed as a

triumph

TRIUMPH (triumphus)

, and gained for the painter a European reputation. Official invitations then caused him to settle at Brussels, where he died on the loth of November 1887. Among his greater works may be named: " The Last Honours paid to

Counts

COUNTS

Egmont and Horn by the Corporations of the Town of Brussels," now at Tournay; " The Death of Egmont," in the Berlin gallery; the " Coronation of Baudouin, Emperor of

Constantinople

CONSTANTINOPLE
CONSTANTINOPLE, COUNCILS OF

," painted for

Versailles

VERSAILLES

; " The Temptation of St Anthony," in the palace at Brussels; " The Siege of Antioch," " Art and Liberty," a " Portrait of M. B. Dumortier " and " The Plague at Tournay," all in the Brussels gallery. " A Gipsy Woman and her Children " was painted in 1852. " M. Gallait has all the gifts that may be acquired by

work

WORK

taste

TASTE (from Lat. taxare, to touch sharply; tangere, to touch)

, judgment and determination," wrote Theophile Gautier; his art is that of a man of tact, a skilled painter, happy in his dramatic treatment but superficial. No doubt, this Walloon artist, following the example of the Flemings of the Renaissance and the treatment of Belgian classical painters and the French Romantic school, sincerely aimed at truth; unfortunately, misled by contemporary

taste

TASTE (from Lat. taxare, to touch sharply; tangere, to touch)

, he could not conceive of it excepting as dressed in sentimentality. As an artist employed by the State he exercised considerable influence, and for a long period he was the leader of public taste in Brussels.
See Teichlin, Louis Gallait and die Malerei in Deutschland (1853) J. Dujardin, L'Art flamand (1899); C. Lemonnier, Histoire des beaux-arts en Belgique (1881).

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