by Ardeana Hamlin
of The Weekly Staff
The pursuit of information about an artist brought Katrien Steelandt, 39, and Patrick Vanden Berghe, 48, of Oostkamp, Belgium, to Bangor Public Library on June 23. They were in the city to learn more about artist Valentin Henneman, who was born in Oostkamp in 1861. It was their first trip to Bangor.
Vanden Berghe, a librarian in Oostkamp, said three things spurred him and Steelandt, of the Oostkamp Historical Society, to begin research about Henneman.
First, there was Valentin Henneman Street in Oostkamp. “Most people in Oostkamp know something about Valentin Henneman,” Vanden Berghe said. It was known, for example, that Henneman came to the United States in 1906 and that he made regular return visits to Belgium see to family members who operated a bay tree nursery until it was lost in the turmoil of World War I.
The second was the Henneman painting that hangs in the Oostkamp City Hall, as well as the many portraits of noblemen and other dignitaries Henneman painted during the many years he lived in Belgium. Many of those paintings still hang in the castles — there are 17 in all, Steelandt said — of the nobles who commissioned the paintings.
“He was artistically gifted,” Vanden Berghe said.
The third was a National Heritage Day event, a local celebration where participants, including Steelandt and Vanden Berghe, were asked to plan a project to let residents know more about the history of Oostkamp.
“We thought maybe a walk or bicycle tour having to do with Henneman,” Steelandt said. Since nothing was known about Henneman’s years in the United States, she and Vanden Berghe began doing Internet and other research.
“There were many missing details and wrong dates,” Vanden Berghe said.
Although Henneman’s reason for coming to the United States is not yet clear, it is known that his brother, Arthur, settled in St. Louis, Missouri, in the early 1900s, but who returned to Oostkamp in the 1930s. It also is known that Henneman painted an altarpiece representing the Holy Family for the cathedral in Helena, Montana, at the request of Bishop Jean-Baptiste Brondel, first Catholic bishop in Montana, who was from Bruges, Belgium.
When Vanden Berghe and Steelandt looked in a telephone directory for listings of the name Henneman in the Oostkamp area, things got really interesting. That’s how they found Willie Henneman, Valentin’s great-nephew who lives in the Oostkamp area, and that’s how Bangor came to be on their research radar. Willie Henneman had inherited Valentin’s family photographs depicting his life in Bangor.
Six months ago, the search for the details in Henneman’s life in Bangor led Vanden Berghe and Steelandt to Bangor Public Library and to Bangor Room librarian Elizabeth Stevens. She delved into the library’s microfilm newspaper archives to fill in the gaps for Vanden Berghe and Steelandt. Her researches revealed that Henneman had been an associate of artist and teacher Asa Grant Randall of Rhode Island who founded the Commonwealth Art School, or colony, in Boothbay Harbor, and that Henneman was a member of that organization which began with 15 members and grew to 200 by 1922. Henneman married on Jan.1, 1918, Mabel Dealing of Bangor, a public school art teacher. The couple settled down in the Queen City and Henneman joined various art societies, such as the Fotocraft Club and the Bangor Society of Art, and sometimes exhibited his paintings in the lecture room of Bangor Public Library.
Stevens also told Vanden Berghe and Steelandt that the library has five Henneman paintings in its collection — three paintings of Haymarket Square, donated by Margaret Atwood in 2000; ” Lantern Parade at Halloween,” donated to the library by Mabel Dealing Henneman in 1938; and “Rummage Sale in Belgium” which depicts Bruges, Belgium. The library also has in its collection a bronze bust of Hannibal Hamlin sculpted by Henneman.
The rummage sale in Bruges depicted in Henneman’s painting, Vanden Berghe said, is still held in that city.
An article in the Bangor Commercial dated Feb. 22, 1916, reads: Mr. Henneman says Pickering Square is one of the most picturesque localities anywhere in the vicinity and he has made spirited studies of the daily life there.
An article in the Commerical dated April 21, 1918, states: For kicking over the easel on which Valentine Henneman, a Bangor artist, was drawing in Haymarket Square … Percy Lanpher was fined $1 and costs … Lanpher thought he was preventing a German spy from making strategic drawings of the square and considered it his patriotic duty to stop it. But as Mr. Henneman is a Belgian, he is not only not a German sympathizer, but very much the other way.
Other Commercial newspaper items Stevens found included several about snow sculptures Henneman made in his frontyard the winter of 1923 for the amusement of Bangor residents. In honor of a Shrine circus that was expected in Bangor, he sculpted a camel of snow. Others snow sculptures included Abraham Lincoln and other presidents, a racing skater and frolicking cats.
The Commercial articles also reveal some of the names of the paintings Henneman exhibited in Bangor, including “Rush Time,” “Rest Time,” “A Zero Morning in the Maine Central Yards,” “Sun Kiss,” “Chums,” a portrait of the Rev. Ashley Smith of the Universalist Church in Bangor, a portrait of Charles Reed of Bangor, views painted behind Colby College in Waterville, scenes of Boothbay Harbor, “The Mad Ophelia” and a life-sized portrait of Bangor pianist C. Winfield Richmond.
“All this is thanks to Elizabeth,” Vanden Berghe said of the information he and Steelandt now have on Henneman and his work.
One of the other places in Bangor Vanden Berghe and Steelandt visited was Mount Hope Cemetery to find the graves of Valentin Henneman and his wife, Mabel. “We are the first people from Oostkamp to see Valentin Henneman’s grave — his relatives [in Belgium] have never been to the States,” Vanden Berghe said.
Vanden Berghe and Steelandt said their goal, after their return to Belgium, is to use the information they have gathered about Henneman to do an exhibit about him at the Oostkamp City Hall. They also will write an article about him for a periodical published by the Ooskamp Historical Society.
Those who have information about Henneman or his paintings, or who have images of Henneman paintings they wish to share with Vanden Berghe and Steelandt, may email Vanden Berghe at patrickvandenBerghe@gmx.net.
For information about Henneman paintings at Bangor Public Library, call Elizabeth Stevens at the library at 947-8336 or email her at esteve@bpl.lib.me.us.