Van Bastelaer René

René Van Bastelaer was a Belgian artist, born in Charleroi in 1865 and died in Brussels in 1940. He was a graphic artist, etcher, lithographer, sculptor, art historian and author. He worked in the studio of Antoine Van Hammée and then focused on engraving. From 1885 he worked as a volunteer at the Royal Library in Brussels and became deputy curator of the Print Room in 1879 and was chief curator from 1904 to 1930. He was friends with J. Smits and A. Rassenfosse. He made portraits, interiors, farms and landscapes. Together with Hulin de Loo he collaborated on the book Pieter Breugel the Elder (1907), for which he was responsible for the catalog of the drawing and engraving work. His work The Prints of Pieter Breugel (Les Estamps de Peter Breugel, 1908) grew into a reference work. He was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Belgium and enthusiastically defended the cause of contemporary engraving. René Van Bastelaer exhibited at the Salon Triennal des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1903, at the Salon d'Art Moderne in Charleroi in 1911, at the Exposition de la Lithographie Belge Contemporaine in the Royal Library in Brussels in 1931. (Piron)