At the Paris
Salon of 1839, Wiertz showed not only his
Patrocles, but also three other works:
Madame Laetitia Bonaparte on her deathbed, ''The fable of the three wishes — Man's insatiability
and Christ entombed''. Badly hung and lit, his entry elicited indifference on the part of the public, and provoked sarcasm among the critics. Charles Baudelaire described Wiertz as '...that infamous poseur, […] a charlatan, idiot, thief […] who does not know how to draw and whose stupidity is as massive as his giants'. Baudelaire's criticism would set the tone for Wiertz's reception in the twentieth century. '' His humiliation at the Paris salon of 1839 led to a profound rancour against art critics and against Paris, as expressed in his virulent pamphlet
Bruxelles capitale, Paris province. In 1844, Wiertz painted a second version of his
Patrocles on an even bigger scale than the first (the 1836 version measures 3.85 by 7.03 meters, the 1844 version 5.20 by 8.52 meter). The 1836 version is now in the Museum of Walloon Art in Liège, the 1844 in the
Wiertz Museum in Brussels. After the Paris disaster, Wiertz veered increasingly towards the excessive. A fine example is the monumental
The Fall of the rebellious Angels, 1841, painted on an arched canvas of 11.53 by 7.93 meter. He received national recognition in his home country and was made Knight of the
Order of Leopold. The death of his mother in 1844 was a terrible blow to the artist. He left Liège in 1845 to settle in Brussels for good. During this period he painted a confrontation of Beauty and Death,
Two young girls (The beautiful Rosine) (1847), which remains perhaps his most famous work. Dissatisfied with the shiny effect of
oil painting in particular in large canvases, he developed a new technique combining the smoothness of oil painting with the speed of execution and the dullness of painting in
fresco. This technique of
mat painting entailed the use of a mixture of colours, turpentine and petrol on holland.
The Homeric battle (1853) was the first big-scale painting executed in this technique. However, the components used in this technique are responsible for the slow decay of the works produced with it and have impacted on the critical reception of the artist's work. The use of the chemicals may also have contributed to the artist's early death after suffering from ill health for a long time. Many of his works from the 1850s have a social or philosophical message, often translated in delirious imagery, like
Hunger, Madness and Crime (1853),
The Reader of Novels (1853),
Suicide (1854),
The premature burial (1854) and
The last gun (1855). Wiertz was also a fine portrait painter, who made self-portraits at various ages. As a sculptor, he produced his most important project towards the end of his life: a series of plasters representing
The Four Ages of Man (1860–1862), reproduced in marble for the Wiertz museum by Auguste Franck. Influenced mainly by
Rubens and the late
Michelangelo, Wiertz' monumental painting often moves between classical academism and lurid romanticism, between the grandiose and the ridiculous. Although his work was often derided as
art pompier (firefighter art), his pictorial language nevertheless presage Symbolism and a certain kind of Surrealism, two currents that would play an important role in Belgian painting. ==Later life==