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Lot Essay
Adèle Kindt made her debut at the Brussels Salon at just fourteen years old. The Kindt household evidently was a supportive environment for artistic talent, as Adèle was referred for training at a young age to a friend of her father’s, Antoine Cardon, Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy in Brussels. Her two sisters, Laurence and Clara, would also go on to establish careers as professional artists.
Central to Kindt’s artistic development was her association with the neoclassicist Jacques-Louis David and two distinguished members of his circle, Sophie Frémiet Rude and the history painter François-Joseph Navez, both of whose studios she would later join. Following the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, David had settled in Brussels in 1816 during his self-imposed exile and established a studio that attracted both French émigrés and local artists. This proximity to David and his artistic milieu proved formative, shaping the young artist’s style at a critical stage, and her career went on to be marked periodically by medals and accolades from various academies. She remained unmarried and devoted her life to painting and teaching, continuing to exhibit until her death aged eighty.
An arresting self-portrait in charcoal at around sixteen years old is preserved at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. no. RP-T-1940-220; fig. 1), and although the present work cannot be strictly described as a self-portrait as the artist would have been in her early fifties, she has undeniably drawn upon her own likeness.
Central to Kindt’s artistic development was her association with the neoclassicist Jacques-Louis David and two distinguished members of his circle, Sophie Frémiet Rude and the history painter François-Joseph Navez, both of whose studios she would later join. Following the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, David had settled in Brussels in 1816 during his self-imposed exile and established a studio that attracted both French émigrés and local artists. This proximity to David and his artistic milieu proved formative, shaping the young artist’s style at a critical stage, and her career went on to be marked periodically by medals and accolades from various academies. She remained unmarried and devoted her life to painting and teaching, continuing to exhibit until her death aged eighty.
An arresting self-portrait in charcoal at around sixteen years old is preserved at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. no. RP-T-1940-220; fig. 1), and although the present work cannot be strictly described as a self-portrait as the artist would have been in her early fifties, she has undeniably drawn upon her own likeness.