A Pair of Swans

Arden Charlotte Léonie, born in Antwerp in 1859 or in 1860. She was the first wife of a painter Henri Arden and a pupil of Alfred Stevens.

She had a preference of anecdotic genre-scenes and landscapes. Seldom reflected in large format. Her impulsive style and strange virility of colours allowed her to paint differently.

From the press: “Her feminine sensibility led to a preference for an anecdotic and sentimental subject, which she managed to portray with grace and often imbued with a certain melancholy”.

Her personality was mainly expressed in the delicacy and subtlety with which she managed to evoke a certain poetic and mystical atmosphere, mentioned in “Biographie Nationale”

Exhibition in the ‘Cercle Artistique’ Brussels 1886 and in the Salon de Paris ever since 1896.

Died in Uccle-les-Brussels in 1904.

Museums:

Antwerp, Brussels.

Literature:

Joachim Busse, Internationales Handbuch aller Maler und Bildhauer des 19. Jahrhunderts;

Le Dictionnaire des Peintres Belges du XIVe siècle à nos jours, La Renaissance du Livre;

Paul Piron, De Belgische Beeldende Kunstenaars uit de 19de en 20ste eeuw, Art in Belgium;

Lexicon of the Belgian Romantic Painters, Antwerpen 1981;

Biografisch Lexicon Plastische Kunst in België, Arto 2000;

E. Bénézit, Dictionnaire Critique et Documentaire des Peintres Sculpteurs Dessinateurs et Graveurs, Grüd 1999.