(Egide Charles) Gustave Wappers, Baron Wappers
- Artist: Portraits Mechanostares Brevetés
- Date: 1860
- Medium: albumen carte-de-visite
- Dimensions: 3 1/2 in. x 2 1/4 in. (88 mm x 56 mm) image size
- Portrays: (Egide Charles) Gustave Wappers, Baron Wappers
- Museum: The National Portrait Gallery
- Collection record: The National Portrait Gallery website
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About this artwork
This is a close‑up albumen carte‑de‑visite of the Belgian painter Egide Charles Gustave Wappers, Baron Wappers (1803–1874). In the tiny frame he looks straight at us from behind gilded trim, and his gaze feels almost immediate. The photograph shows an added sketchbook and decorative cloth outside the picture’s borders – a clever trompe‑l’oeil trick that turns the flat card into a three‑dimensional scene. Wappers was a leading painter of mythological and historical scenes; he taught at the Royal Academy in Antwerp and served as painter to King Leopold I. The image, produced by Portraits Mechanostares Brevetés in the early 1860s, was later given to the National Portrait Gallery by Algernon Graves in 1916.
See it in person
(Egide Charles) Gustave Wappers, Baron Wappers is in the collection of The National Portrait Gallery at St Martin's Place, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
