Louise De HEM ✿

Louise De Hem (10 December 1866, Ypres - 22 November 1922, Forest) was a Belgian painter. She was a skilled, highly successful portrait painter. She painted in oil and pastels, however preferring the latter technique.

She was a student of Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant, Jules Lefebvre and Fernand Cormon at the Académie Julian in Paris on the advice of Jules Breton, who had greatly appreciated her abilities.

She then came into contact with the Belgian painters' milieu, which was very well represented in Paris, and was noticed by the Belgian painter Alfred Stevens who encouraged her in her preference for the use of pastels over oil paints and provided her with precious advice for her career as a painter.

She also won a gold medal at the 1904 Paris Salon of French Artists with the canvas The Japanese Doll. She also exhibited in the United States, at the "Palace of Fine Arts", the "Woman's Building" and the "World's Columbian Exposition" in Chicago.

Louise De Hem returned to Ypres in 1891 and there she shared her atelier with that of her brother-in-law Cériez. After the latter's death (September 2, 1904) she settled in Forest, near Brussels with her mother and sister and continued her career as a portrait painter.
Lei Louise died prematurely at the age of 56 in Forest, in 1922.
In 1927 her sister Hélène Cériez-De Hem donated 49 of Louise's works to the community of Ypres, which formed the nucleus of a new collection for that city's museum, which had been destroyed during the First World War