Auguste Donnay

Artemis

Auguste Donnay (born March 23, 1862 in Liège ; † 1921 in Jette ) was a Belgian painter, etcher, lithographer and poster artist.

In addition to a craft apprenticeship, he studied at the evening classes of the Académie royale des beaux-arts de Liège with Adrien De Witte (1850-1935).

Thanks to a scholarship, he attended the Académie Julian in Paris in 1885 . He was influenced by Puvis de Chavannes .

In 1888 he began his career as an illustrator and worked for "Caprice-Revue" and "La Wallonie". Together with Armand Rassenfosse and Émile Berchmans , he designed posters for the Auguste Bénard publishing house. One of his works, “Concours International de Chant d'Ensemble” was shown in “Les Maîtres d'affiche”.

In 1900 he was appointed professor of decorative arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Liège.

In 1905, Auguste Donnay gave a speech at the International Exhibition in Liège in which he tried to define a Walloon spirit in painting, which he opposed to the spirit of Flemish painting.

At that time he moved to Méry (Esneux), a small village in the Ourthe Valley, about fifteen kilometers from Liège.

He illustrated many books, including a. dramatic works by Maurice Maeterlinck .

A victim of chronic depression, he committed suicide in 1921 in the Jette-Saint-Pierre mental institution.

literature

• Paul Buschmann junior: Donnay, Auguste . In: Ulrich Thieme (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists from Antiquity to the Present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 9 : Delaulne-Dubois . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1913, p. 445 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
• Berko, Patrick; Berko, Viviane, Dictionary of Belgian painters born between 1750 & 1875 ; Brussels: Laconti, 1981

Web links

Commons : Auguste Donnay  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Auguste Donnay. Biographical data and works in the Netherlands Institute for Art History (Dutch)
• Donnay, Auguste in: Dictionnaire des peintres belges (digitized version )