Royal Academy of Belgium artist Edward P. Buyck de Morkhoven, known for his portraits of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and other prominent politicians, lived in upstate New York for much of his adult life.
Buyck, also was known for his painting of race horses, landscapes and historical settings. At the time of his death in 1960, his painting of an old-time Albany scene at the corner of State and Pearl streets, still hung at the Munger-DeWitt Clinton Hotel in Albany.
Buyck came to the United States during World War I after he was wounded fighting with the Belgium forces. He became a naturalized United States citizen in 1918 while serving with the U.S. Army at Camp Mead and at Watervliet Arsenal.
While living at Glens Falls, in Warren County, after World War I, his painting “A Field in Flanders” was placed in the Museum de Luxembourg at Paris, France.
He then operated the 1,160-acre Black Mountain Fox Ranch at North River, in Northern Warren County. Raising silver foxes in the Adirondacks afforded him time and inspiration for his art.
“He is a great lover of nature and animals and takes personal care of the foxes at his ranch,” J.E. Smith, secretary of the National Fox Breeders Association, wrote of Buyck in 1921. “He says he treats the foxes as human beings and that the results are very satisfactory.”
During the First World War, Buyck designed Red Cross, YMCA and military recruitment posters (here’s an online collection), and he sketched political cartoons critical of the Kaiser.
In 1920, Buyck married Mary Willard Vine, a landscape artist and interior designer. The couple lived for much of the rest of his life at Slingerlands, near Albany.
In 1920, Buyck supplied the ornamental plaster work at the new Herkimer Theater at Herkimer.
In 1930, he designed the historical markers and was a member of the committee that researched the War of 1812 route from Big Sandy Creek to Sackett’s Harbor of the frigate Superior’s great rope cable.
Buyck died June 8, 1960 at age 71 at St. Peter’s Hospital in Albany.
Sources: The Post-Star, Glens Falls; The Plattsburgh Sentinel; The Journal and Republican, Lowville; Altamont Enterprise and Albany County Post, Jan. 15, 1960; and “Who’s Who in the Fox Industry,” J.E. Smith, American Fox and Fur Farmer, July 1921.
Illustrations: Above, Edward Pierre Buyck (Belgium, 1888-1960, studied art in Bruges, Antwerp, and Paris) portrait of Charles Poletti (1903–2002), a justice of the New York Supreme Court, then Lieutenant Governor and the first Italian-American Governor in the United States. Below, Buyck’s portrait of one of America’s most famous racehorses, Man O’ War (foaled March 26, 1917).
Edward Buyck was also connected to the Cartskills. Around 1915, Annette Skene Emory, widow of noted physician Dr. Alexander Skene, and her sister, Marie Myer, befriended a pair of artists, Paul Sawyier of Kentucky and Edward Buyck, a World War I refugee from their home country of Belgium. They invited the artists to share a chapel-turned-studio on the Skene estate, Bonnie Em, in Highmount, on the Delaware-Ulster County border. The artists worked there for a year or more. Sawyier later moved into the Village of Fleischmanns where he died in 1917. He is buried in Frankfurt, KY where he is revered as the state’s unofficial artist laureate. Buyck, as you have outlined here, moved to the Albany area and continued a distinguished career. He is buried in Albany Rural Cemetery.
Thanks for the additional information that did not turn up in my research
you’re welcome. my privelege.
I have an original oil by Buyck, painted in Belgium.It looks like a nun walking around a My mother bought it at an estate sale probably 80 years ago. It has some issues having gone through the flood in Wilkes-Barre, PA. But, on the whole is in relatively good shape and quite beautiful. I would like to know if there is any interest in it, either in restoration or purchase. I can send photos.
I would love to see pics. where was the estate sale? any other historical info? thanks for connecting.
I have a Buyck painting called “Village of Laurentides”. He was a friend of my father as he installed one of his murals downstate somewhere in the 50’s. I would like ao add a photo of it as I would like to sell it