Alfred Bastien

Alfred Théodore Joseph Bastien (16 September 1873, in Ixelles – 7 June 1955, in Uccle) was a Belgian artist, academic and soldier.

He attended the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Ghent, where he studied with Jean Delvin. He then enrolled in the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where he studied with Jean-François Portaels. He won the Prix Godecharle there in 1897. He traveled to Paris, where he enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He was in Paris when hostilities broke out in what would become the First World War.

In July/August 1918, Lieutenant Bastien was attached as a war artist to the Canadian 22nd Battalion.

Some of the work he created in this period is part of the Beaverbrook Collection of War Art at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

In the Belgian Army.

After serving in the 'Garde Civique' like many other Belgians, Bastien fled to Great Britain after the fall of Antwerp in October 1914 and despite his age (43) volunteered for the Belgian Army. He was eventually transferred to the 'Section Artistique' in Nieuwpoort along with many of his pre-war artist friends and acquaintances. From 1915 onwards, he made many drawings and sketches of the situation on and behind the Belgian lines on the Yser river. The British war-time magazine 'the Illustrated War News', among others, regularly published his work, quite often in distinctive and semi-panoramic, multi-color two-page spreads. In 1917, on personal request by Lord Beaverbrook who owned several of Bastien's pre-war paintings, he was seconded to the Canadian Army until September 1918, during which time he produced many works of art specifically related to the Canadian war experience.

After the war, Alfred Bastien painted a grand Panorama of the Yser Front in 19th century tradition, a project which he had been planning since 1914 and which, according to his own telling, had been suggested to him by King Albert in 1914. During his war-time service in the Belgian Army, Bastien made many sketches, drawings and photos which were later either incorporated into the Panorama itself or were useful studies in technique and effects. The 'Panorama de l'Yser' painting itself measured 115 meters in length and 14 meters in height and was initially exhibited in Brussels. In the mid 1920s, a permanent building was constructed in Ostend, Belgium to house the Panorama along with a multitude of props and decor. The intention of moving the Panorama to Ostend was to capture a share of British war-tourism, since most British coming to visit relatives' war graves arrived by steamer in Ostend before proceeding to the area of the Ypres Salient. The Panorama opened at Ostend in 1926.

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