Piet Verhaert - Monumentale gevel met poort - Sold

Piet Verhaert (Antwerp, February 26, 1852 – Oostduinkerke, August 4, 1908) was a Belgian painter and etcher of genre scenes, cityscapes, interiors, figures and portraits. He also painted decorative panels.
Verhaert initially studied sculpture at the Academy of Antwerp but switched to painting. He was a student of Jozef Van Lerius. In 1873 he made his debut at the Triennial Salon of Antwerp. He worked in Belgium and the Netherlands, and briefly in Paris (1876) and Spain (1882-1883) where he made copies after the example of Velázquez. Verhaert was a member of the artists' group les XX (1883-84) and co-founder of Les XX (1891). In 1883 he also joined the Antwerp art circle Be U Yourself, just like Les XX a reaction against the traditional art institutes.
In Wees U Zelf, Pol Demont, Emile Claus, Theodore Verstraete, Edgar Farasyn, Frans Simons, Eugène Joors and Frans Van Cuyck were also active. Be Yourself only existed until 1887. He was also co-founder of the Société des Aquafortistes Belges. From 1886 he was a teacher at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp.
Verhaert was influenced by Henri De Braekeleer. Initially he painted genre scenes from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Throughout his career he also painted commissioned portraits. From the early 1980s he painted contemporary subjects, worked outdoors and let the brown dominant colors disappear from his work. He mainly gained fame as a painter of the old city neighborhoods of Antwerp and coastal scenes. The wide surroundings of his coastal villa in the dunes of the Westhoek provided him with inspiration for this. In 1899 he painted a fresco in the stairwell of Antwerp's town hall. As an etcher he makes an album of old corners in Antwerp.