Frans van Leemputten

Frans Van Leemputten or Frans van Leemputten (29 December 1850 – 26 November 1914) was a Belgian Realist painter, watercolorist and art educator. He is known for his depictions of landscapes in the Campine and Brabantine regions in Belgium, genre scenes with villagers and animals.

Life Van Leemputten was born in Werchter as the son of Jan Frans Van Leemputten and Maria Catharina Van Cleynenbreugel. His father was originally a farmer but moved to Brussels in 1852 to become a painting restorer as he had an interest and some practice in art. Frans and his older brother Cornelius were encouraged by their father to practise art. In 1855 the family briefly moved to Antwerp where the young Frans attended classes at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts. In 1858 the family moved back to Brussels where Frans worked mainly in his father's restoration shop.

Van Leemputten took evening classes at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brussels from 1865 to 1873. Lauters encouraged Van Leemputten to paint from nature rather than to copy old compositions. Under the influence of Constantin Meunier and the Dutch landscape painter Paul Gabriël who was then living in Brussels and the reading of Hendrik Conscience's novels which extolled the virtues of the peasants of the Campine, Van Leemputten started to devote himself almost exclusively to the depiction of that region and its inhabitants.

Van Leemputten died in Antwerp on 26 November 1914. Thanks to their precise and objective observation, his works have documentary value.