Eugene Verboeckhoven. Eugène Joseph Verboeckhoven, a Belgian painter, was born at Warneton in West Flanders.
He was a painter, a sculptor, an etcher, an engraver, and a lithographer of animals, animated landscapes, and portraits. Eugène Verboeckhoven studied under his father, Barthélemy Verboeckhoven, a sculptor.
In 1816 he worked under Voituron in Ghent. In the first half of the 19th century, the salons were a home for burgeoning art.
Verboeckhoven was a regular participant at the Ghent and Brussels Salons. He visited the Ardennes, France, Great Britain, Germany and Italy.
He was held in high repute and elaborated on the works of artists such as De Jonghe, De Noter, Koekkoek, Daiwaille, Kheelhof, Verheyden, and his pupils Louis-Pierre Verwee and the Tschaggeny brothers. He was a member of the academies of Brussels, Ghent, Antwerp, St. Petersburg and Amsterdam. Verboeckhoven was an excellent painter of animals and, together with his pupils, appears to have been the last link to a secular tradition with its roots deep in the 17th century, which linked observation of nature, studied composition, and idealized reproduction of reality. Like the Old Masters, he obtained the colour blue for his skies by grinding down lapis lazuli. He was a prolific artist and very meticulous in his preparation: hundreds of sketches and studies were produced on the spot, assembling different elements like pieces of a jigsa