Adolf Alexander Dillens
1821–1877 · Belgian genre painter
Adolf Alexander Dillens (Ghent, 1821 – 1877) was a Belgian genre painter who trained under his elder brother, Hendrik Dillens. He is remembered for his scenes of everyday life, painted for a public that enjoyed images of ordinary people.
His first works were historical in nature, but he later turned mainly to pictures of peasant life in Zealand. Among his best-known paintings are The Gossip at the Window, Taking Toll at the Bridge, of which he made three versions, Asking in Marriage, A Fair at Westcapelle, shown at the Paris International Exhibition of 1855, and A Ball at Goes, shown at the same exhibition. He is also associated with The Juggler, exhibited at the London International Exhibition of 1862, and Skaters, held in the Brussels Museum, alongside Recruiting: Austrian Soldiers Halting at a Tavern.
His legacy is modest and rests mainly on his contribution to Belgian genre painting of his period, in which his work documents rural and popular life in the Low Countries.