Wiertz Antonis-Joseph
(1806-1865) Nationality: Belgian Activity: Painter Average price rate: Between $ 20,000 and 40,000 A. J. Wiertz was born in Dinant and studied painting in Antwerp with Herreyns and van Bre. He then completed his studies in Paris in 1829 and in 1832 in Rome where he painted The Greeks and the Troyans claiming the body of Patrocles as well as the portrait of Princess Laetitia Bonaparte.
Back in Brussels he soon became much successful after the Belgian State offered him a studio.
Wiertz wanted to rival Michelangelo or Rubens and managed to equal them in a certain way. His enormous paintings were notably quite demonstrative of the Romantic movement.
He also painted portraits and a museum reuniting his quite realistic works was founded after his death. His beautiful Rosine, inspired by Schiller, was a romantic confrontation between a skeleton and a superb naked girl. He also showed demons and macabre beings in other works and was considered as a pioneer of Symbolism and even Surrealism. Wiertz was in fact a true heir of Hans B. Grien and Urs Graf and represented also a link to James Ensor and Delvaux.
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