Queen Louise Marie of Belgium (1840)
by
Eugène Joseph Verboeckhoven
When it came to 19th Century visual arts, the Belgian artist Eugène Joseph Verboeckhoven (1798 - 1881) pretty much did it all: he was a painter, sculptor, engraver, and lithographer. He was best known in his lifetime for his animal and nature images, although he was also a portraitist, and met with a great deal of critical and commercial success.
The full title of this work is Queen Louise Marie of Belgium with a horse and a black Newfoundland. It is interesting to note that the black of color of the Newf is specified — perhaps because many early Newfoundlands were Landseers, judging by the visual record.
Queen Louise, one of many famous Newf owners, was the very first queen of Belgium. The country became independent of the Netherlands in 1830, and two years later she married its first king, Leopold I. She herself was a daughter of the King of France — though he became such only in 1830, owing to the disruption of the French Revolution — and among her many royal relatives counted Marie Antoinette as a great-aunt.
