Camiel De Waegeneire (1855-1946) - Venetië, San Giorgio Maggiore

In the village of Gottem along the Leie they called him Camiel Lap, after the tailor’s trade that he, like his father, practised as a self-employed man. Camiel De Waegenaere was born there on 8 October 1855, son of Angelus De Waegenaere and Cornelia Bracke, and he died on 14 November 1946 in Deinze, ninety-one years old, and his life long remained a bachelor. He was a painter, popular writer and poet: he wrote occasional poems for weddings, births and funerals, experimented with various poetic forms, and left several stories behind.

The sharpest image of him comes from the local history journal Het Land van Nevele, in an article about the Gottem pilot and artist Juul Claeys (1930–2002). Claeys looked up to De Waegenaere as a boy: an elderly, somewhat eccentric and solitary man, but someone who painted, wrote stories and poems, and enjoyed the respect of quite a few other artists who occasionally visited. After Camiel’s death, Claeys painted his portrait from a photograph. That is the portrait of a village figure who, within his small world as an artist, was recognized without ever having seen the academy or the art market. In 2021, through Familiekunde Vlaanderen, region Deinze, Arnold Vandenbroucke issued a volume containing ninety of his poems, together with his family line."} }16:16:00? There is extra characters at end? The final JSON should be exact. I included trailing quote and braces; ensure valid JSON. The timestamp