Albert DANDOY (1885-1977): « Panorama vers Wépion » 1959

Albert André Dandoy was born on April 3, 1885 in Namur. He is the fifth and last child of Auguste Dandoy (1839-1893), landscape artist and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Namur. With such a father figure, it is therefore quite logical that he showed an interest in pictorial art quite early on and perpetuated the lineage initiated long ago by his grandfather, Jean-Baptiste Dandoy (1799-1873), painter and restorer of old paintings. On the school benches, on the other hand, it supports very badly the rigor and the authority of the traditional education. What is worth to him to be successively excluded from the college of the Jesuits and the athenaeum of Namur. Following this series of dismissals, his mother, Elise Gerondal, decided to enroll him in the Academy of Painting where her late husband once taught, who died when Albert was only eight years old. It was in this establishment where, in contact with the masters Vanden Eede and Merny, he perfected his skills for painting. After his time at the Academy, he took lessons from Gustave Jomouton, professor of wood and marble imitation, with the aim of practicing the profession of decorator. For ten years, he devoted himself to industrial painting work without interruption. All this while helping with the financial expenses of his mother who receives only a meager widow's pension. It was only around 1912 that Albert made his debut as a painter with the painting Meuse à Godinne. A hobby that he will have the opportunity to deepen with the unemployment caused by the First World War from 1914. During the period of the conflict, he also devotes himself to pen drawing as well as etching. which he uses to reproduce his father's works on canvas. At the same time, he produced for the first time on an easel paintings of his own composition. Apart from an interest in his father's compositions, he strives to study Namur masters such as Joseph Quinaux, François Roffiaen, Théodore Baron and Félicien Rops.