Georges Croegaert

Georges Croegaert (7 October 1848 – 1923) was a Belgian academic painter who spent most of his career in Paris. He is known for his genre paintings of scenes from elegant society and portraits of women. He also had a reputation for his humorous depictions of red-robed Catholic cardinals executed in a highly realist style.

Life Georges Croegaert was born in Antwerp. He studied at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts. He moved to Paris in 1876 where he remained active as an artist for the rest of his life. He had a successful career as a portrait and genre painter. His paintings received critical acclaim and were sought after by English and American collectors. He exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon between 1882 and 1914 and in Vienna in 1888.

He died in Paris in 1923 after a long and successful career.

Work General Croegaert painted initially highly detailed still lifes, bird and flower subjects, and occasional outdoor genre scenes.

Society portraits Most of Croegaert’s portraits of elegant young women are distinguished by their lavish detail. The influence of his relation, Jan Jacob Croegaert-Van Bree, is suspected in the elegance and realism of his style. By the late 1860s there was a ready market for genre scenes with bourgeois figures, usually young glamorous women, depicted in sumptuous surroundings. With the onset of the Belle Epoque in the 1870s, this type of paintings depicting fashionable women set in an interior became popular at the Paris Salon. By depicting cardinals participating in activities such as 'approving the artist’s nude model', card games, excessive or sumptuous eating and drinking and indulgent pastimes such as philately and painting, these painters poked fun at the excessive and sometimes debauched lifestyles of the upper echelons of the Catholic clergy.