Edmond de Maertelaere (1876 - 1938) Old woman, Pont Aven

Edmond De Maertelaere was born in Ghent on 8 October 1876.
At the age of 14, Edmond won a first prize in decorative drawing at the Nivelines school. He then enrolled at the "Royal Academy of Drawing, Sculpture and Architecture of the City of Ghent", as it was known at the time. He left this institution in 1898 as a laureate, receiving the gold medal and a bonus of three thousand francs. With this money, which at the time represented a small fortune, Edmond De Maertelaere went to Paris and studied for two years at the Académie Julian. The grant also enabled him to travel to Florence, Rome, Vienna and Munich to study the work of the great masters. In Pont-Aven, Brittany, he found an ideal artistic climate.

After his period in Paris, Edmond De Maertelaere moved to the St. Elisabeth beguinage in Ghent, where he lived for the rest of his life. Once appointed professor at the Ghent Academy, he showed remarkable restraint. He took part in neither the large official group exhibitions nor the local group exhibitions. On the one hand, his consistent independent nature worked against the spread of his name. At the same time, however, he had the advantage that his drawings, watercolors, gouaches, pastels and paintings were appreciated and bought by a public of connoisseurs.


Edmond De Maertelaere loved Ostend and often stayed there. For his time, this artist was a man who travelled a lot and worked, and frequently exhibited abroad. He visited Germany, England, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain and Switzerland on several occasions.
In addition to all this, he also designed numerous posters, for example, for the Ghent Floralies, stained-glass windows for churches, illustrated books and painted numerous murals.

Edmond De Maertelaere belongs to this generation of artists, most of whom were relegated to the background by the rise of Expressionism between the two world wars. Poetic realism, influenced here and there by symbolism, was no longer rooted in an atmosphere of ideoplastic expression and language. De Maertelaere has received numerous prizes, first prizes and other official recognition in Belgium and abroad. His works can be found in museums in Ghent (including the Museum of Fine Arts), Sao Polo, Rio de Janeiro, Texas, Vienna, Stockholm and in numerous private collections.