The Paintings of Jacques de Lalaing

Born in London on the fourth of November in 1858, Jacques de Lalaing was an English-Belgian painter and sculptor who worked in a realistic, naturalistic style both as a portrait artist and creator of historical scenes. As a sculptor, Lalaing produced both allegorical and animal bronzes as well as memorial monuments. Along with sculptors Léon Mignon and Antoine-Félix Bouré, he established a distinctively Belgian tradition of animal art.  

Jacques de Lalaing was the younger son of Belgian diplomat Count Maximilien IV de Lalaing, a member of a noble southern Flanders family which played an important role in the history of the Netherlands. Jacques’s older brother, Charles Maximilien de Lalaing, became an important diplomat who served as Belgian Ambassador to four countries from 1899 to 1917. 

Lalaing received his academic training in England until 1875 at which time he relocated to Brussels, Belgium. He studied at the city’s Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts under genre and portrait painter Jean-François Portaels, the founder of the Belgian Orientalist school; historical and portrait painter Louis Gallait; and portrait painter Alfred Cluysenaar, best known for his monumental decorative works.

As a sculptor, Jacques de Lalaing trained under sculptor and medalist Baron Thomas Jules Vinçotte, sculptor to the court of King Leopold II, and sculptor Josef Lambeaux, known for his large bronze statues and marble bas-reliefs. Lalaing created the British Waterloo Campaign Monument in Brussels, a large edifice of bronze figures on a plinth of rusticated stone blocks, below which lies the bodies of seventeen fallen soldiers from the battles at Quatre Bras and Waterloo. He also designed the bronze horseman battle group at the Bois de la Cambre in Brussels as well as the twenty-two meter bronze pylon in Schaerbeek, originally made for the 1913 Ghent Exposition.  

To ensure the accuracy of his work, Lalaing extensively used the medium of photography; he also enlisted the services of renowned photographers in Brussels to compile a photographic record of his work. Lalaing accumulated a large collection of “Academies”, images produced for artists by Parisian photographers and publishers to serve as sources for inspiration. He also photographed thousands of reference images  in his Brussels studio. These photos served as a simple work tools, the preparatory sketches from which to produce the initial plaster or charcoal study. In his vast Brussels studio, Lalaing staged his subjects facing the camera: celebrities whose portrait he had been commissioned to paint, as well as professional models, children and animals selected to inspire a future composition.

Jacques de Lalaing was commissioned for interior decorative scenes for the town hall of the Belgian commune of Saint-Gilles which bordered the city of Brussels. Other artists commissioned for this project included Fernand Khnopff, Albert Ciamberlani, and Emile Fabry, among others. Lalaing created six allegorical oil on canvas panels depicting the themes of commerce and industry; these panels were placed around the allegory “Truth, Goodness and Beauty”, a collaboration between painter Alfred Cluysenaar and himself.

In 1896, Lalaing was elected a member of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels; between 1904 and 1913, he served as its director. Lalaing died on the tenth of October in 1917 at the age of fifty-eight. In addition to private collections, his works are represented in the museum collections of Antwerp, Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Tournal. A collection of Lalaing’s photographic studies are housed in the Musée d’Orsay, France where an exhibition of these images was held from September of 2022 to March of 2023. . 

Notes: The website for L’Hôtel de Ville de Saint-Gilles, now a museum in the commune of Saint-Gilles, can be found at: https://hoteldeville.stgilles.brussels/fr/

Top Insert Image: Alexandre de Lalaing, “Jacques de Lalaing”, Date Unknown, Vintage Print

Second Insert Image: Jacques De Lalaing, “Shirtless Model Sitting”, 1980, Albumin Print, Musée d’Orsay

Third Insert Image: Philip de László, “Comte Jacques de Lalainig”, 1931 (Paris), Oil on Board, 90 x 72 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Jacques de Lalaing, “Model with Mannequin”, circa 1884, Albumin Photo, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam