{{Short description|Belgian painter}} {{Use dmy dates|date=May 2020}}
thumb|300px|''At dawn'' '''Charles Hermans''' (7 August 1839 – 7 December 1924) was a Belgian painter of genre scenes, portraits, landscapes and some still lifes.<ref name=rk>[https://rkd.nl/explore/artists/37803 Charles Hermans] at the Netherlands Institute for Art History {{in lang|nl}}</ref> Through a number of his monumental genre paintings he played an important role in the recognition of Realism in Belgian art.<ref name=denis>Denis Laoureux (ed.), ''En nature La Société libre des Beaux-Arts D’Artan à Whistler'', Musée Félicien Rops, 2013, p. 14 {{in lang|fr}}</ref>
== Life == Hermans was born in Brussels in a well-off bourgeois family. He showed an interest in art from an early age. In his native city Hermans received some artistic guidance from the painter Louis Gallait. He then studied at the Saint Luc workshop in Brussels, a liberal workshop which offered an alternative to traditional academic education. Between 1858 and 1861 he stayed in Paris where he studied at the workshop of the Swiss painter Charles Gleyre at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts.<ref name=bnb>[http://www.academieroyale.be/Academie/documents/FichierPDFBiographieNationaleTome2088.pdf Lucien Solvay, ''Charles Hermans''] in: Biographie Nationale de Belgique, p. 672-675 {{in lang|fr}}</ref> Gleyre was a prominent painter who had taken over the studio of Paul Delaroche in 1843 and taught a number of younger artists who became prominent, including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler.<ref name=whistler>{{cite web|title=Marc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre, 1806-1874|url=http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/people/biog/?bid=Gley_GC&initial=G|website=The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler|publisher=University of Glasgow|accessdate=3 November 2018}}</ref> [[Image:Charles Hermans masquerade.png|thumb|left|290px|''The Masked Ball'', Chimei Museum, Tainan, Taiwan]]
From 1862 to 1867, Hermans stayed in Italy. In Rome he became fascinated with the life of the monks, which became a favorite subject of many paintings between 1866 and 1869.<ref name=bnb/> The theme of Catholic clergy was popular at the time as evidenced by the vogue of cardinal paintings made by artists such as the Belgian Georges Croegaert.<ref name=master>Joost De Geest, ''500 chefs-d'oeuvre de l'art belge'', Lannoo Uitgeverij, 2006, pp. 215 {{in lang|fr}}</ref> He had an early success with his paintings of clerics. He later made several trips especially in the Mediterranean region and, in particular, Spain.<ref name=pan>A. Adriaens-Pannier et al., ''150 ans d’art belge : dans les collections des Musées royaux des beaux-arts de Belgique'', 26 September 1980 – 4 January 1981, Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, 1980, p. 105 {{in lang|fr}}</ref> thumb|220px|''Circe the temptress''
Hermans joined the Société Libre des Beaux-Arts, founded in Brussels on 1 March 1868, which brought together several famous Belgian naturalist artists such as Charles de Groux, Alfred Verwee, Constantin Meunier, Louis Dubois, Félicien Rops, Constantin Meunier, Louis Artan de Saint-Martin and Théodore Baron. The members admired the work of the French Realist painter Gustave Courbet and wished to confront the prevailing Academism in contemporary Belgian art. The Realist movement in Belgium gradually gained ground as evidenced by the fact that the Realist artists Constantin Meunier and Louis Artan de Saint-Martin received prizes at the Brussels Salon of 1869. The battle with the Belgian art establishment appeared to have been won when in 1875 Hermans' ''At dawn'' was accepted at the Brussels Salon without opposition.<ref name=denis/>
Hermans participated in major international exhibitions such as the art section of the World Fair held in Paris in 1878 where he showed ''At dawn'' to general acclaim. He earned an international reputation thanks to this success. His paintings were acquired by museums, both in Belgium and abroad.<ref name=bnb/> Despite this early success Hermans was not able to realise the expectations. He had hoped to reiterate the reception of ''At dawn'' by creating the large, ambitious work ''The masked ball'', which was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1880. The impact of the work was less than that of his earlier work. Still many reproductions of it were made and the original was acquired by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1882.<ref name=soth>[http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2011/19th-century-european-art-n08783/lot.27.html Charles Hermans, ''The masked ball''] at Sotheby's</ref>
Hermans died in Menton on 7 December 1924.
== Work == Hermans was a prolific artist who practised many genres throughout his career: history painting, genre art, portraits and landscape painting. He initially painted genre scenes of monks. He subsequently tried to elevate genre painting by treating biblical subjects as genre art. He painted a ''Job visited by his friends'' in which he depicted Job as an ordinary poor man in a Realist style. He then turned to genre scenes such as the ''Honeymoon'' showing a fashionable young couple clearly in love. He later turned to subjects with a social connotation such as the ''Sunday visit to the children's clinic at St. Peter's Hospital''. In this composition he addressed human tragedy and suffering humanity in a moving and honest manner. The sentimentality of the subject assured the success of this composition. thumb|340px|''Monks playing bowls''
The crowning achievement of his genre art was the work of 1875 ''At dawn''. It is a realistic and moralizing painting representing an encounter of a group of inebriated revellers leaving a restaurant with prostitutes on their arms in the early hours and a group of poor labourers on their way to work.<ref name=bnb/> The work was interpreted as a work of social criticism by contrasting the honest, simple workers with the depraved bourgeoisie. Hermans himself denied that his intention was to engage in social criticism and argued that he chose the subject because of its artistic possibilities.<ref>Maurice Sulzberger, ''Guide Illustré de Bruxelles, Tome II, Les musées'', Touring Club de Belgique, 1917, p. 37-38 {{in lang|fr}}</ref> thumb|280px|left|''Bath in the garden''
Hermans followed up this masterwork with other smaller genre pieces until he attempted another genre scene on a large scale, ''The masked ball''. This work depicts one of the all-night society masked balls of the late 19th century, which were also attended by young women of the ''demi-monde''. The composition shows a large room filled with groups of partygoers some of whom are in the shadows looking from a balcony in the background while others are active on the crowded dance floor in the front. Elegantly dressed men are joined by many women on the dance floor some in close embrace or animated conversation.<ref name=soth/> Many of the men depicted were prominent personalities of the time. Hermans was able to convey with a remarkable skill the jostling and carnival madness of a night at the theater.<ref name=bnb/>
Not achieving the expected success with this work, Hermans turned to smaller scale works often depicting charming women, which were based on the studies he had made for the ''Masked ball''. These works are in the same vein as the society portraits of Alfred Stevens. He also painted at the sea from which he returned with fantasies of nude women bathing and Bacchantes. A new high point of this period is the composition ''Circe as temptress'', which shows a seductive woman in a modern interior with a man passed out at a table with an overturned wine glass. This was a return to the veiled social criticism of his earlier work. In his later years he painted large decorative works and landscapes with many figures. During World War I he treated some wartime subjects such as ''The martyrs'' and the ''Execution of Edith Cavell by the Germans''.<ref name=bnb/>
Hermans' large-format Realist works were influential on the next generation of Belgian artists such as Eugène Laermans and Léon Frédéric.<ref name=pan/>
==Gallery==
<gallery mode="packed" heights="260px" perrow="3" caption="Works of Charles Hermans"> File:Charles Hermans - The connoisseur.jpg|''The connoisseur'' File:Charles Hermans - The flower seller.jpeg|''The flower seller'' File:Charles Hermans - Portrait of a lady.jpg|''Portrait of a lady'' File:Charles Hermans - The onion sellers.jpeg|''The onion sellers'' File:Charles Hermans - A secret admirer.jpg|''A secret admirer'' File:Charles Hermans - Two dancers.jpg|''Two dancers'' File:Charles Hermans - Sketch for the Masked Ball.jpg|''Sketch for the Masked Ball'' </gallery>
==Notes== {{reflist}}
==External links== {{Commons-inline}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Hermans, Charles}} Category:1839 births Category:1924 deaths Category:Artists from Brussels Category:Belgian portrait painters Category:Belgian genre painters Category:Belgian landscape painters Category:19th-century Belgian painters Category:Belgian male painters Category:19th-century Belgian male artists Category:20th-century Belgian painters Category:École des Beaux-Arts alumni Category:20th-century Belgian male artists