Albert DANDOY (1885-1977): « Namur Quai de l’Ecluse » Place Maurice Servais 1940

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 teaching. 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.