Ferdinand de Braekeleer
Ferdinand de Braekeleer: The Exit of the Bridal Couple

Ferdinand de Braekeleer: The Exit of the Bridal Couple
BRAEKELEER, FERDINAND DE
Antwerpen 1792 - 1883

Title: The Exit of the Bridal Couple.
Date: 1866.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Mounting: Relined.
Measurement: 79 x 112cm.
Notation: Signed and dated lower left: Ferdinand de Braekeleer / Antwerpen 1866.
Frame: Framed.

Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

There are people in this masterful painting by Ferdinand de Braekeleer, which the renowned genre artist created in 1866. The artist first learned the craft as a pupil of the Belgian painter Mathieu Ignace van Bree before being accepted at the Royal Academy in Antwerp. No doubt to his displeasure, he was not counted among the moderns of art at the Paris Salon of 1836 because of his backward-looking style, but he received an honour for a historical subject at the same Salon three years later.

Around the bridal couple standing in the centre, the wedding party has gathered outside in front of the house. The horse-drawn carriage, adorned with flowers, is ready to depart for their life together. As they leave, the well-dressed groom gently clasps the hand of his beautiful young bride. Tentatively and lost in thought, however, she seems to pause for a brief moment in the circle of her family. In a gesture of uncertainty, she grasps the lace-trimmed hem of her white apron. But it is not only she who finds it visibly difficult to say goodbye. While the father, leaning upright on a stick and maintaining his posture, gazes wistfully into the distance, the mother leans towards her disappearing daughter and touches her lovingly on the arm. Her inner world of feelings and thoughts is revealed by the look in her alert eyes: Farewell my child, take good care of yourself.

The expressions of some of the bystanders, however, can be interpreted in a completely different way. In addition to the young men toasting the bride and groom, a maid can be seen in the left foreground drying her teary eyes with her apron. Is she possibly mourning the end of a secret love? The angry gaze of the young man with the hat in the centre, fixed on his newlywed husband, can be interpreted in a similar direction. One man's happiness is another man's misfortune!
De Braekeleer, whose paintings breathe the spirit of 17th century Dutch and Flemish painting, succeeds wonderfully in the present picture in illuminating the different emotions of his silent protagonists on the canvas and embedding them in a lively anecdotal narrative of love and farewell.

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