Charles Verlat

Charles Verlat or Karel Verlat was a Belgian painter, watercolorist, engraver (printmaker), art educator and director of the Antwerp Academy. He painted many subjects and was particularly known as an animalier and portrait painter. He also created Orientalist works, genre scenes, including a number of singeries, religious compositions and still lifes. He was a professor of drawing and director of the Antwerp Academy when Vincent van Gogh spent a brief period as a student at the Academy in 1886. The two men got into arguments about van Gogh's unconventional style of drawing.