Marthe Massin

Marthe Massin aka Marthe Verhaeren (6 October 1860 – 2 June 1931) was a Belgian painter and muse of the famous Belgian poet Émile Verhaeren. She was instrumental in preserving the memory of the work and life of Emile Verhaeren.

Life Massin was born into a wealthy family on 6 October 1860 in Liège, Belgium. Her mother was Constance Marchet and her father Gustave Massin, a cigar merchant that moved his family to Brussels in 1877. She had a younger sister, Juliette (1866–1919), who married the Belgian painter William Degouve de Nuncques in 1894.

The sisters Massin trained at the private art academy "Blanc-Garin" founded by the Belgian painter Ernest Blanc-Garin in Brussels that, unlike the state academies, accepted female students since 1883.

After her studies, in 1889, she opened her own studio in her parents' house located in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode. Massin painted cityscapes, peasant women and workers. She exhibited her works several times including at the "Salon triennal" in 1884 and the "Salon de Voorwaarts" in 1889. It is with the insistence of Marthe that the body of Verhaeren could rest in Sint-Amands on the banks of the river Scheldt, the poet's birthplace. In 1930, she donated of part of Verhaeren's literary legacy to the Royal Library of Belgium, including copies of his private library, special editions, and unpublished poems. In addition, she undertook to have Verhaeren's study in Saint-Cloud rebuilt. The Cabinet Émile Verhaeren, with its original furniture, is now in display at the Royal Library of Belgium. Massin bequested Verhaeren's entire archive to that same library upon her death in 1931.

Most of Massin's work is kept in the Archives and Museum of Literature in Brussels. Another part of her legacy ended up in the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp through a private bequest.

A series of drawings and paintings of Massin were exhibited for the first time in 2015 during the exhibition "Fatal flowers/Poetics of love" at the Verhaeren Museum in Sint-Amands. In 2016, some works were on display during an exhibition on Emile Verhaeren at the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Tournai. Since 2018, a portrait of Verhaeren by her hand has been part of the permanent collection of the Verhaeren Museum and become since then part of the museum's collection.

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