Beautiful Mediterranean coastal landscape enveloped in morning fog, seen from above, at Notre Dame de Mai (Six Fours) near Toulon, France.
Dieudonné Jacobs is a Belgian post-impressionist artist who specialized in historic painting, portraits, and landscapes. Born on 10 June 1887 in Montegnée-les-Liège. (Belgium) to a modest family of mine workers, his talent for drawing and sketching were already well honed by the young age of 12. He became well-known among his neighbours sketching their portraits, and with his earnings he purchased painting supplies. Jacobs studied under Adrien de Witte, Auguste Donnay and Évariste Carpentier at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Liège, where he was awarded on August 4, 1914 the “Prix de Rome” from the Darchis Foundation, a scholarship that would take him to pursue his studies in Rome. Unfortunately, these plans were interrupted with the onset of World War I, which had just begun. Jacobs was enrolled and sent to war, where he fought courageously, was injured and made a prisoner in the Battle of Liège. He managed to escape and rejoin his fellow combatants in the 14th Infantry Division. On his return from the war, he was given the Knight of the Order of Leopold cross and the Knight of the Legion of Honour medal. He rejoins his brother, who works as a music teacher at the Toulon conservatory east of Marseille. There he met his future wife and settled in La Garde, an area just east of Toulon. He was once again awarded a study grant to Rome in 1925 and remained there until 1930, replicating the style of Italy’s great painters. He was commissioned to paint the portrait of Pope Pius XI in 1925 and would later go on to produce paintings for St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican and participate in the renovation of the Sistine Chapel.
After 1930, Jacobs spent his life as an artist between the Belgian Ardennes and the French Riviera. He was a part of a talented group of great contemporaries, Richard Heintz, Ludovic Janssen, Joseph Bonvoisin, Emmanuel Meuris, Albert Raty, Camille Barthelemy and his works appear in many museum collections, including Brussels, Liège, Lyon, Spa, Toulon and The Vatican Museums in Rome.
A suffering from progressive vision loss, he eventually lost his ability to paint and finally died blind on 22 January 1967 in his home in La Garde-Var (France). He was 80 years old.