"The Musicians"
Charles H. Van den Eycken (Belgium, 1859 - 1923)
Oil on wood panel with highly ornate original wood, stucco and gilt frame. 
Signed upper right and dated "1893.'
10 1/4 x 9 1/4 (17 1/2 x 16 1/2 frame) inches
 
A Cavalier King Charles and (possibly) a Collie are shown snoozing and seated on a red cushion, next to a drum. The image is bordered with dried leaves and branches from a Chinese Money Plant.  
 
As a very young artist, Charles H. Van Den Eycken quickly became known for his pictorial representations of dogs and cats in interiors. Van Den Eycken’s animals were not depicted as if they were posed but more as active participants. Most of the time, they were portrayed in touching or playful situations, making them highly relatable, which gave life to many of his paintings.
 
Charles H. Van den Eycken was born in Belgium in 1859 into a family of artists. His grandfather was a decorative painter and his father a famous painter of landscapes in the 17th century Dutch style. He naturally became a pupil of his elders and then continued his studies at the Brussels Academy under Joseph Stevens.
 
The young artist, Van den Eycken, grew up at a time when his hometown was emerging from the economic and political aftermath of decades of upheaval, first from the Napoleonic wars and then from the revolution of 1830 which resulted in the formation of Belgium as an independent nation. By the time that van den Eycken was ready to begin his career as a painter, Belgium was a reasonably stable and constitutional monarchy.
 
In the mid-1870s, he moved to Brussels to continue his education at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts where he studied with Joseph Edouard Stevens (1819-1892), a Realist animal painter. Stevens’s painting was grounded in the tradition of the animalier paintings of earlier decades, but his approach was defined by contemporary realism that eschewed idealized depictions of animals as heroic emblems of nobility. Rather, Stevens emphasized the ordinary animals of everyday life.
Charles was also an active member of “L’Essor”, an art circle founded in 1876 when realism became a unifying movement among many young artists. The motto of L’Essor was “One art, one life” and thus emphasized the link between Art and Life. The founders were seen as progressive and rebelled against academic conservatism.
 
From 1881 onwards, he exhibited regularly at the Brussels, Liege, Ghent and Antwerp salons, but also in Holland, Germany and even Spain. He received numerous medals and was highly coveted. He carried out numerous commissions, notably for Queen Marie-Henriette of Belgium.
Charles Van den Eycken is considered one of the most important artists of domestic animals of the 19th century.

Works in the museums of Antwerp, Brussels, Ixelles and Courtrai.