Largest Antony photo

The Ypres Museum recently acquired this exceptionally large, original print from 1907 by Léontine Antony-Permeke. It is the largest photograph in the Antony collection and measures no less than 123 cm high and 153 cm wide (including the frame). Until now, the object was privately owned and hung for many years in a house in Ghent belonging to an exiled resident of Ypres. We are now showing the photograph to the public for the first time in the exhibition DAG JAN.

Friture Yprois

The photograph shows the Grote Markt in Ypres with the Cloth Hall and the Nieuwerck. If you look closely, you can see people building a wooden structure just in front of the Nieuwerk. This is probably the extension of the kiosk that we see in later photographs. If you look even closer, you can see the pre-war chip shop, “Friture Yprois”. The photo beautifully captures the market. It is a technical masterpiece of photography from that time. The activity of the people gives us an impression of daily life in the city. Not only this photo, but almost all of the Antony family's photos are unique testimonies to pre-war Ypres.

Leontine Antony-Permeke

The Ypres Museum has a whole room dedicated to the family's photographs. Today, it is mainly the brothers Maurice (1883-1963) and Robert (1884-1966) Antony who ring a bell. But they inherited their love of photography from their mother. Léontine Antony-Permeke (1858-1923) started working as an independent photographer in Ypres in 1893. As a woman, this was no mean feat. The museum collections of the Ypres museums contain original prints and unique glass negatives by her.

In 1887, she and her husband Honoré Antony (1844-1919) opened a leather goods shop in the Rijselsestraat in Ypres. They acted as a branch for the Brussels photographer Auguste Despret. Léontine probably learned the craft of photography from him. Her brother Henri Permeke (1849-1912), who was an amateur photographer as well as a painter, undoubtedly also influenced her.

In 1893, the Antony-Permeke business moved from Rijselsestraat to Boterstraat. From then on, Léontine started working as an independent photographer. Until then, she had always been listed as a representative of the Despret company. But that collaboration came to an end. She started under the name H. Antony-Permeke photographe and wrote a success story. Her husband Honoré was not a photographer himself, but took care of the business side of things. Léontine mainly photographed portraits. Her oeuvre includes individual portraits such as communicants and religious figures, group portraits of schoolchildren and wedding photos with the whole family.