Egide Linnig

Egide Linnig or Egidius Linnig (25 August 1821, in Antwerp – 13 October 1860, in Sint Willibrords, Antwerp) was a Belgian painter, draughtsman and engraver who is best known for his marine art and occasional genre scenes. He was one of the first realist engravers in Belgium.

Egide Linnig was born in Antwerp as the son of Pieter-Josef Linnig (born in Aschbach, Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany) and Catharina Josephina Leys. His father was a cabinetmaker. He had two older brothers (Jan Theodoor) Jozef Linnig and Willem Linnig the Elder who both became painters and engravers.

From 1834 Linnig studied at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts. Linnig was not happy with the emphasis placed on history painting by Mattheus Ignatius van Bree, the director of the Academy. Linnig was from the start more attracted to the marine genre and took advantage of van Bree’s death in 1839 to change his teacher to Jacques van Gingelen, a landscape painter and engraver. Linnig’s classmates and contemporaries during those years included François Lamorinière, Hendrik Frans Schaefels, Lucas Victor Schaefels, Louis van Kuyck, Karel Verlat and Henri Adolphe Schaep. During his studies at the Academy, Linnig made many works from life, particularly of the Scheldt river.

While still enrolled at the Academy, Linnig participated in the Triennial Salon of Antwerp in 1840 exhibiting two marine paintings, Fishing for Herring on the Dogger Bank and Coast near Zierikzee. In 1842 Linnig decided to put an end to his academic studies. In the summer of the following year he joined the crew of fishing boats in order to study all ship maneuvers in detail. Linnig would in later years continue to take small sea trips for inspiration. One of the trips inspired him to the painting The brig 'Timor' shipwrecked off the English coast, which he exhibited at the Triennial Salon in Brussels in 1842.

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