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Hendrik, Baron Leys

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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Baron (1815-1869), Belgian painter, was born at Antwerp on the 18th of February 1815. He studied under Wappers at the Antwerp Academy. In 1833 he painted "Combat d'un grenadier et d'un cosaque," and in the following year "Combat de Bourguignons et Flamands." In 1835 he went to Paris where he was influenced by the Romantic movement. Examples of this period of his painting are "Massacre des echevins de Louvain," "Mariage flamand," "Le Roi des arbaletriers" and other works. Leys was an imitative painter in whose works may rapidly be detected the schools which he had been studying before he painted them. Thus after his visit to' Holland in 1839 he reproduced many of the characteristics of the Dutch genre painters in such works as "Franz Floris se rendant a une fete" (1845) and "Service divin en Hollande" (1850). So too the methods of Quentin Matsys impressed themselves upon him after he had travelled in Germany in 1852. In 1862 Leys was created a baron. At the time of his death, which occurred in August 1869, he was engaged in decorating with fresco the large hall of the Antwerp Hotel de Ville.