Self-Portrait

Cécile Cauterman (née Boonans) obtained special permission to study life drawing at the prestigious Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten van Gent, the prestigious all-male art school in her hometown of Ghent. Rejecting the traditional feminine subject matters of flower painting, still life, and society portraits, Cauterman dedicated her art to representing those on the margins of Ghent society. She established a studio in a tenement house in a poor section of town and sympathetically depicted the suffering in her midst—people who were hungry, homeless, mentally ill, and physically disabled. Her provocative drawings received biting criticism in her early exhibitions, but she remained devoted to this important, dark subject matter. She gradually gained greater appreciation in Belgium and beyond for her incisive, empathetic drawings of society’s have-nots.