Louis Buisseret

Louis Buisseret (Belgian, 1888 - 1956). Louis Buisseret was Belgian painter, draftsman and engraver. At the age of 16, Buisseret enrolled at the Art Academy of Bergen where he studied engraving and met Anto Carte, with whom he became friends. Later in life he was appointed a director of the Art Academy of Bergen, a position he had kept for 20 years.

In 1908, Buisseret started studying at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels under Jean Delville who had a major influence on Buisseret's later artistic work. In 1910, as a student Buisseret won the second prize in the Belgian Prix de Rome competition in painting and in 1911 he won first prize in the Prix de Rome competition in the engraving.

He was awarded the second prize in the Belgian Prix de Rome painting competition of 1910, and the following year won the first prize in the category of printmaking. Buisseret’s time in Rome was of particular importance to his development, and the influence of Italian Renaissance painting, particularly the frescoes the artist saw in Florence and Rome, was to be reflected in his art for much of his later career. During the years of the First World War Buisseret painted mainly portraits. In 1928 he was one of the founding members of the Nervia group of artists, and the following year was appointed director of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Mons, an institution that he continued to lead until 1949. Active mainly as a painter of portraits, nudes and still life subjects, Buisseret received several honours and prizes during his long career before his death in 1956, at the age of sixty-eight. Works by him are in numerous museums in Belgium, as well as in Barcelona, Madrid, Riga and Indianapolis; the last of these houses a group portrait of the artist’s family.