Eugene de Blaas

Eugene de Blaas painted the Venice that visitors wanted to believe in: pretty young women leaning on balconies and gathering at the wellheads, teasing the fishermen and boatmen around them. He became the leading painter of this cheerful Venetian genre in the late 19th century, working in a polished Academic style that made every fabric and reflection gleam.

He came to it almost by inheritance. Born near Rome in 1843 to a Tyrolean father, Karl, who was himself a painter and academy professor, Eugene moved to Venice as a boy in 1856 when his father took a post at the Venetian Academy. He trained under him and in time taught there himself.

His scenes are staged and sunlit, full of easy flirtation on the quays, and collectors in Britain and America bought them eagerly during his lifetime. He went on painting the same bright Venetian world well into the new century, and died in Venice in 1931.