Adèle Kindt

Who was Adèle Kindt?

Adèle Kindt was a Belgian painter, the leading female painter of the 1820s to 1840s.

Born in Brussels, into a family which produced many female artists, Marie-Adélaïde Kindt was trained in drawing by engraver Antoine Cardon. She studied painting under François-Joseph Navez and was encouraged by Jacques-Louis David.

Although trained as a neoclassicist, Kindt's work was informed by Romanticism. Her early works included many historical scenes. Her Épisode des journées de septembre 1830, portraying a scene from the Belgian Revolution of 1830, is considered her masterpiece and is on display in the Brussels city museum on the Grand Place

After the 1840s, Kindt painted much less ambitious works, largely portraiture and generic scenes, adapting her style to suit the changing tastes of the public, but never recaptured the success of her early career. She died in Schaarbeek.

Her younger sisters Clara and Laurence were landscape painters, as was her sister-in-law Isabelle Kindt-Van Assche.