Jean-François Portaels

Biography of Jean-François Portaels ( 1818-1895 )

Born into a middle-class family in Vilvoorde, his father, a brewer, sent him to study at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where his director, François Navez, founder of the modern classical school, accepted him as a pupil in his class. Around 1841, Portaels left for Paris, where he was kindly received by Paul Delaroche. He entered and won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1842.
From Rome, where he arrived in June 1843, Portaels undertook his Grand Tour from June 1845 to January 1847. Leaving Sicily, he passed through Malta, Greece, Constantinople and Beirut. He then visited Damascus, Jerusalem and Bethlehem, before spending four months in Egypt, where he was commissioned to paint a bust and full-length portrait of Viceroy Mehemed Ali. From then on, Orientalism became a major theme in his work.

He returned to Belgium in 1847, where he successfully exhibited in Ghent on the occasion of his return. This initial recognition enabled him to succeed H. Vanderhaert as director of the city's Academy of Fine Arts. In 1849, he married the daughter of his first master, Navez, and settled in Brussels. Unfortunately, the poor wife died in childbirth, giving birth to two stillborn twins. The young painter took refuge in his work and remained very attached to his father-in-law, who remained a great support to him.

For his first Parisian exhibition, the 1855 Universal Exposition, Portaels wanted to position himself as a worthy representative of Orientalist painting. Drawing on the experience of his travels in Turkey, the Levant and Egypt, he saw himself as a painter of oriental reality, transfigured by a poetic sensibility in keeping with the artistic vein of the “juste milieu”, i.e. romantic in emotion and academic in form.
Of the seven paintings he sent to the exhibition, three illustrate events Portaels witnessed in the East: a sandstorm in the desert, with Caravane en Syrie surprise par le Simoun (Brussels, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts, inv. 3001), the accompaniment of a dead man to his final resting place, with Un Convoi funèbre au désert de Suez (Private collection) and, finally, one of the Egyptians' favorite entertainments, with Un conteur dans les rues du Caire.

From 1858 to 1870, he ran a free workshop, whose liberal teaching, which encouraged individualism, soon proved highly successful. This workshop overshadowed the Brussels Academy so much that its director, Louis-Eugène Simonis, entrusted Portaels with the composition classes in 1863. He held this post for two years, then returned to his studio, where he was free to teach.
From Morocco, where he lived between 1870 and 1874, he made frequent trips to Algeria, Egypt and Lebanon. He brought back numerous sketches, the primary source of his oriental inspiration.

Professor at the Académie royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels from 1868, he became its director in 1878. He was to exert a major influence on subsequent generations of Belgian painters, including Alfred Bastien, Théo Van Rysselberghe and Edouard Agneessens, sculptor Charles Van der Stappen and architect Charles Licot.

He can be recognized as the founder of the Belgian Orientalist school.