(b Aarschot, 1728; d Leuven, 1811). Belgian painter. He was a late imitator of Rubens, and his entire career reflects his unwillingness to come to terms with the Neo-classicism of the late 18th century. At 18 he was in the studio of Balthazar Beschey in Antwerp. There he studied the work of Rubens and the Antwerp school. For the first 20 years of his career Verhagen received few commissions and supported himself with decorative work. His first important painting was the Presentation of the Virgin (Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.), and this large Baroque work brought him commissions (e.g. St Stephen Receiving the Papal Legates, Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.). Charles of Lorraine (1712–81) offered to finance Verhagen on a visit to Italy. Verhagen left for Italy in 1771 but found the Neo-classicism prevalent in Rome of little interest. He did, however, produce a few works in this period, for example the Pilgrims to Emmaus (Laxenburg, Altes Schloss). He left Rome in 1773 and returned to Leuven via Vienna. His later years were more successful for him. His works from this period show that although Verhagen may have adopted some Neo-classical subject-matter and occasionally included architectural details in his works, for example in the Continence of Scipio (1805; Leuven; Mus. Vander Kelen-Mertens) and the Infant Moses Presented by his Mother to the Daughter of Pharoah (1786; Leuven, Stadhuis), he was essentially a Rubéniste, given his emphasis on colour rather than line. However, his work is very uneven in quality, often careless and impetuous in execution, and he lacked Rubens’s genius. Verhagen was regarded during the 19th century and the early 20th as a major 18th-century Belgian artist, but more latterly as a representative of an artistic movement at its nadir and an artist who clung to Baroque formulae that had lost their meaning.

• Verhagen, Pierre-Joseph
  • Belgium, §III, 3(iii): Painting and graphic arts, c 1700–1830
  • Beschey, Balthazar
  • Leuven