Frans Verhas

Frans Verhas or Franz Verhas (Dendermonde, 1827 – Schaerbeek, 1897) was a Belgian painter. He is known for his portraits and genre scenes of women and children set in luxurious bourgeois homes. His elaborate salon interiors are characterised by their rich abundance and the display of a wide range of textures, such as tapestries, satins, furs, marbles and metals. Frans Verhas also painted animals, history paintings and still lifes.

Life Frans Verhas was born in Dendermonde as the son of Emmanuel Verhas. His father was a painter who for twenty years was a teacher at the local Academy and also served as a director of that Academy. Frans received his initial art training from his father along with his younger brother Jan (or Jan Frans). His brother became a very successful artist.

Verhas studied initially at the Academy of Fine Arts in his hometown Dendermonde and then at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp. One of his teachers at the Antwerp Academy was Nicaise de Keyser, a painter of mainly history paintings and portraits and one of the key figures in the Belgian Romantic-historical school of painting.

Frans Verhas lived and worked for various periods in Paris in the late 1870s and during the 1880s. The decorative program consisted of pastiches of the Flemish and Venetian masters.

Frans Verhas' constructed compositions include rich interiors, enriched with satins and goblins, skins of animals and marbles that frame the elegant crinoline worn by the female sitters. He was particularly skilled in the rendering of the textures of various materials such as satin, marble and other precious materials in his works.

Verhas received various commissions for religious paintings for churches in his hometown Dendermonde and for historical paintings for the City hall of Dendermonde. His history paintings treat their subjects with a powerful realism.