Margoli Crantin Sectory 11
Page 07
ASSCHE, AMELIE VAN. Portrait painter and court painter to Queen Louise Marie of Belgium. She was born in 1804, and was the daughter of Henri Jean van Assche. Her first teachers were Mlle. F. Lagarenine and D' Antissier; she later went to Paris, where she spent some time as a pupil of Millet. She made her debut at Ghent in 1820, and in Brussels in 1821, with water-colors and pastels, and some of her miniatures figured in the various exhibitions at Brussels between 1830 and 1848, and in Ghent between 1835 and 1838. Her portraits, which are thought to be very good likenesses, are also admirable in color, drawing, and modelling; and her portrait of Leopold I., which she painted in 1839, won for her the appointment at court.
It is an action which may take its place by the side of the myth of Mucius Scaevola, or the real exploit of that brother of the poet AEschylus, who, when the Persians were flying from Marathon, clung to a ship till both his hands were hewn away, and then seized it with his teeth, leaving his name as a portent even in the splendid calendar of Athenian heroes. Captain Bethune, without call or need, making his notes merely, as he tells us, from the suggestions of his own mind as he revised the proof-sheets, informs us, at the bottom of the page, that "it reminds him of the familiar lines,--
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