Pierre Jan Van Der Ouderaa

Belgian 1841 - 1915

An artist of the Belgian School, Pierre Jan Van der Ouderaa was primarily a history painter, but also executed decorative panels, religious subjects and portraits. He was born at Anvers on 13 January 1841. A student at the Academy of Antwerp, he learned the art of paintings from such celebrated artists as J. Jacobs, J. van Lerius and N. de Keyser. In addition to this formal training, he visited Italy from 1866 to 1869, as well as the Orient and Spain with his friend A. Cogels.

In the beginning of his career as an artist, Ouderaa painted rather romantic genre scenes and then moved on to historical genre scenes with a more academic character. After a trip to Palestine in 1893 with friends M. Rooses and K. Ooms, he decided to devote himself almost entirely to religious paintings and orientalistic genre scenes. Eventually settling himself in Antwerp, he became a professor at the Superior Institute for the Arts there in 1895.

Ouderaa received much recognition for his work, winning artistic prizes in various and sundry cities such as London, Lyon and Antwerp. In 1865 he won second place in the extremely prestigious and competitive Prix de Rome and was decorated as a Knight in the order of Leopold in 1881. Then in 1890 Ouderaa was elected to be a member of the academic corps.