Biographies

Félicien Joseph Victor Rops ( 1833 – 1898) Rops was born in Namur, where he studied at the Fine Art Academy. He attended the Namur Académie, then went on to Brussels where he studied at the workshop of Saint-Luc. In 1856 he founded the satirical weekly ‘Uylenspiegel’. In 1868 he became Vice-President of the Société Libre des Beaux-Arts de Brussels. In 1870 he founded the Society of Etchers. He settled in Paris in 1874. He was welcomed by and . Baudelaire admired him, writing, “En Belgique, pas d’Art ; l’Art s’est retiré du pays. Pas d’artistes, excepté Rops.” His mixture of decadence and Christianity connects him to a writer like Huysman. Arthur Symons wrote, but did not publish, an essay on Rops. His early prints were mostly lithographs but he became expert at soft-ground etching (vernis-mous) and was much sought after as an illustrator of books. Puvis de Chavannes Gustave Moreau