Louise Héger

• Name — Louise Heger • Birth Name — Elisa Marie Louise Hortence Heger • Born — 14 July 1839 • Birthplace — Brussels, Belgium • Died — 21 July 1933 • Place of death — Ixelles, Belgium • Known for — Painting • Movement — Impressionism • Father — Constantin Heger • Mother — Zoe Claire Heger née Parent • Relatives — Paul Heger (brother)

Elisa Marie Louise Hortence Heger was born on 14 July 1839 in Brussels to Constantin Heger and his wife Zoe née Parent. She grew up in a family that supported progressive values and had economic resources. Her father was a professor at the Athénée de Bruxelles, and her mother ran a boarding school for girls in Brussels, where Emily and Charlotte Brontë were educated, and was close to the feminist writer Zoé de Gamond. Louise also attended the school, with singing and drawing being her favourite subjects. The family circle in which Louise moved was also close to Belgian artistic circles. Her brother, Paul Heger, married Léontine van Mons, who was the sister of the patron Emile van Mons and the niece of the poet and art critic Émile Verhaeren. Her sister, Victorine Heger, married Emile Picard, the brother of the collector and art critic Edmond Picard.

• Illustration — Forest Landscape Artistic training was inaccessible to women in Belgium before the 1880s, and so Louise Heger pursued alternative paths that allowed her to acquire painting technique and aesthetic sensitivity, as well as to expand her social capital. She attended her family's institute, the Pensionnat Heger, and benefited from the teachings of the artist Paul Lauters. He taught her the technical fundamentals of drawing, engraving, and oil painting. He also introduced her to the art of landscape painting. While initially her landscape studies were carried out in the studio and from prints, he soon introduced her to painting en plein air. At that time a woman had to be accompanied or chaperoned when out painting or sketching en plein air; however, she took advantage of the revival of landscape painting genre then taking place in Belgium to educate her eye through contact with male counterparts and their works: from the 1870s onwards, Heger frequented the artists' colonies established in Genk and Tervuren. There she rubbed shoulders with Alphonse Asselbergs, Joseph Coosemans, and Théodore T'Scharner. Dissatisfied with local landscapes and financially secure, she sought inspiration beyond the Belgian borders, and visited Italy, Switzerland, and Norway. When she was unable to practise outdoors, Heger went to the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium where she practised copying the works on display. In 1883, she joined the women's studio of the Belgian painter Alfred Stevens, based in Paris. The teaching provided in this private workshop finally gave her the opportunity to try her hand at human representation. Above all, it allowed her to perfect her use of oil and to familiarise herself with the impressionist aesthetic.

• Illustration — Fishermen's Route in Coxyde Louise Heger's artistic interests and ambitions imply that she adopted a behaviour outside the social norms assigned to women at the time: she freed herself from the domestic sphere to paint from nature and she chose to remain single in order to practise her art regularly. This lifestyle was only feasible after a compromise with her parents: by hiring her as an art teacher at the Heger boarding school, they ensured that their daughter remained close to Brussels and that she also had a salary. Heger painted primarily landscapes. Under the impetus of the painters of the Société Libre des Beaux-Arts, landscape paintings soon crystallised the issues of pictorial modernity in Belgium, and they now occupied the walls. Building on the relationships she had established with cultural figures, Heger participated in the annual exhibitions of the Brussels Artistic and Literary Circle in 1873, 1874, and 1878. Two of her works, entitled Le ruisseau du Hoyoux (The Hoyoux Stream) and the Sémois au printemps (Sémois in Spring), were exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1879. She repeated the experience at the Paris Salon in 1884 under the guidance of her teacher and painter Alfred Stevens. Her presence on the national and international art scenes was noted, and her works were discussed. She soon began receiving commissions from bourgeois families eager to decorate their homes, such as Emile van Mons. During the following decade, a turning point occurred in Louise Heger's artistic career. On the one hand, she freed herself from her parents' guardianship by ending her teaching activities at the boarding school. She opened her new independent studio on Rue Isabelle, which became as much a space for creation as it was for exhibitions, and she now devoted herself exclusively to the practice of her art. Furthermore, she managed to free herself from the aesthetic influences inherited from her relationships with landscape painters in the realist tradition. Thanks to her network of contacts, Heger benefited from changes in the exhibition system: she frequented the private cultural circuits where the Brussels intelligentsia flocked to convert their economic capital into cultural capital. Her creations were included in the private collections of Ernest Solvay and Henri Van Cutsem. Alongside her participation in domestic salons, she continued to exhibit regularly at official Salons, and participated in all the annual national exhibitions from 1895 to 1900. One of her studies entitled Houffalize joined the public collections of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium after being presented at the Brussels International Exposition of 1897. The work was lost during the Second World War and no image of the painting has survived. Her brother, Paul Heger, used his influence among his huge network of friends and colleagues to find buyers for his sister's work.

In her 70s her health started to decline and she moved back to Brussels, where she outlived many of her contemporaries, dying on 21 July 1933, aged 94.

Throughout her life, Louise Heger maintained an intense correspondence with the painter Alphonse Asselbergs. Her letters are preserved in the archives of the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent. In 1913, Louise Heger and her brother Paul donated to the British Museum four intimate letters written by Charlotte Brontë to their father Constantin. They are now in the British Library collection.

• Illustration — Landscape by the pond, charcoal Many of Louise Heger's paintings are private owned, and relatively few are on public view in museums. • Au bord du lac (By the Lake), undated, oil on canvas, 91 x 151 cm, signed lower right, undated • Balade en forêt de Soignes (Walk in the Sonian Forest), undated, oil on canvas, 65 x 49.5 cm, unsigned, undated. (Tervueren, Friends of the School of Tervuren) • Vue des dunes (View of the Dunes), [18]78, oil on canvas, 40 x 64.5 cm, signed and dated lower right. (Knokke-Heist, Sincfala Museum of the Zwinstreek) • Vue prise du haut de l'escalier Belliard (View from the Top of the Belliard Staircase), undated, oil on canvas, 16.5 x 23 cm, unsigned, undated. (Private collection) • Vue sur la Forge Roussel (View of the Roussel Forge), undated, ink on paper, 16.3 x 41.6 cm, unsigned, undated. In: PICARD (Edmond), La Forge Roussel, Brussels, 1880, pp. 18-19. (Brussels, KBR) • Effet de lune (Moon Effect), undated, oil on panel, 24 x 38.5 cm, unsigned, undated. (Brussels, Ixelles Museum) • Village de Coxyde (Village of Coxyde), undated, oil on canvas, 44 x 30 cm, unsigned, undated. (Tournai, Tournai Museum of Fine Arts) • Verger à Tervueren (Orchard at Tervueren), undated, oil on canvas, 34 x 53.5 cm. (Location unknown) • Paysage avec arbre près de la ferme (Landscape with Tree near the Farm), 1888, oil on panel, 24 x 33 cm. (Location unknown) • A Dilbeek (In Dilbeek), undated, lithograph, 19.4 x 14.5 cm. (Brussels, KBR) • Boqueteau, undated, engraving, 18 x 15 cm. (Brussels, KBR) • Sienne (Siena), undated, watercolour on paper, 14.5 x 24 cm. (Free University of Brussels - Archives, Heritage, Precious Reserve Department) • Sans titre (Village de montagne) (Untitled (Mountain Village)), 1892, watercolour on paper. (Free University of Brussels - Archives, Heritage, Precious Reserve Department) • Baraque Michel, oil on canvas (Free University of Brussels - Archives, Heritage, and Precious Reserve Department) • Paysage avec ferme (Landscape with Farm), oil on panel, 1891 (Free University of Brussels - Archives, Heritage, and Precious Reserve Department)