A Pair of Swans

Arden Leo (Charlotte Léonie) was born in Antwerp in 1859 or in 1860. She was the first wife of a painter Henri Arden (1858 – 1917)  and a pupil of Alfred Stevens (1823 – 1906).

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”. Arden Leo exhibited in the ‘Cercle Artistique’ Brussels 1886 and in the Salon de Paris ever since 1896.

She died in Uccle-les-Brussels in 1904. Today her paintings can be found in many private and public collections, including in museums in Antwerp and Brussels, Belgium.

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.