View of Bruges with City Hall by August Fischer

Artist: August Fischer (1854–1921)

Title: English: View of Bruges with City Hall, Dansk: Udsigt til Brügge

Date: 1905

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: height: 45 cm (17.7 in); width: 59 cm (23.2 in)

Inscriptions: Signed and dated lower right: Aug. Fischer, Bruges 05.

What I love about this painting:

We see history here, the city of Bruges as it was in 1905, before the outbreak of WWI. It was a prosperous town with many churches and a large middle class.

The boatman has a story. How old is he? Does he support his wife and children with what he earns ferrying people to and from? Or is he just starting out in life, working to earn enough to marry a certain girl? This is a fairytale painting, serene and yet concealing many secrets. I think it’s the perfect setting for fantasy romance.

Perhaps the future looks bright to him now, but in less than a decade, our boatman will be thrown in the most horrific war the world had ever seen. If he is young, he will be sent to the front. If he is old, his boat will be conscripted to ferry soldiers and munitions, and he will do what he must to survive.

More than a century has passed since this scene was recorded. Bruges is now the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium.

About the Artist: I could find no Wikipedia article about Fischer, but random searches at the websites of several auction houses yielded some information.

Johannes August Fischer (1854–1921) was a Danish landscape and architecture painter and the elder brother of the Danish artist, Paul Fischer. His parents were the master painter and varnish manufacturer Philip August Fischer (1817—1907) and Gustafva Albertina Svedgren (1827—83). The family was well off, upper middle class. While his father had started as a painter, he became financially successful as a manufacturer of paints and lacquers.

August Fischer was first apprenticed to a sculptor, but at the age of nineteen, he applied to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, making the switch to painting. His work debuted at the Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition in 1874, where he exhibited until his death in 1921.

August Fischer traveled abroad for much of his career. He lived and worked in Spain and Italy from 1883 to 1884. After that, he traveled to southern Germany and Italy. Several of his more well-known paintings were of Nuremberg and Rothenburg on the Tauber, and Venice and Florence.