Raphaël Evaldre
French-Belgian Master Glass artist, born Auguste Raphaël Evaldre, in Lille on March 22, 1862 and died (in Uccle?) on May 25, 1938. Son and grandson of Master Glass artists.
Raphaël Evaldre studied painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He moved to Brussels in 1892 at the time when Art Nouveau was born. At the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1889, Evaldre discovered American glass art, invented by Louis Comfort Tiffany, he became the first European user.
Very quickly, Evaldre was admitted into the circle of the great Art Nouveau architects, Horta, the first, then Hankar, Saintenoy, Delune, Brunfaut, for whom he designed and executed the most beautiful stained glass windows still visible today.
He was also a painting professor at the Bishoffseim Institute in Brussels in 1908. A refugee in Paris in 1914/18, Evaldre found his workshop devastated on his return. He then embarked on a career as a painter. No stained-glass windows are attributed to him after the war.
In 1929, at the age of 67, Raphaël Evaldre had a house and workshop built on avenue Coghen in Uccle. House currently in the process of being classified, but of which it is not certain that the stained glass windows that adorn it are by his hand.
