Jean-François Portaels

Jean-François Portaels or Jan Portaels (3 April 1818 – 8 February 1895) was a Belgian painter of genre scenes, biblical stories, landscapes, portraits and Orientalist subjects. He was also a teacher and director of the Academy of Fine Arts of Ghent and the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. He is regarded as the founder of the Belgian Orientalist school. During his time, he was praised as the premier painter of 'everyday elegance and feminine grace.' Through his art, teaching, and his leadership of the Académie Royale in Brussels, he exerted an important influence on the next generation of Belgian artists, including his pupil Théo van Rysselberghe.

Life Portaels was born in Vilvoorde, the son of a rich brewer who also was mayor of Vilvoorde. As he spent much of his youth drawing the scenes of his native town, his father sent him in 1836 to study at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. At the time the director was the painter François-Joseph Navez who had been a pupil of Jacques-Louis David. Portaels studied at the Academie under Navez with other brilliant students such as Charles de Groux and Joseph Stallaert. Navez also invited him to study in Navez's own studio, which enjoyed a great reputation at the time.

In 1870 he started to travel again spending most of his time in Algeria. He returned to Brussels in 1874. On 1 January 1878 he was appointed the director of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts as the successor of Simonis. which had so long been the object of his ambition. In 1881 he was made a Commander in the Order of Leopold.

He died in Schaerbeek. Stylistically he remained immune to the main artistic currents in European and Belgian art of his time: the Classicism of his master Navez and the Romanticism of his second master Delaroche. Instead, he created his own style which was characterised by its charm and elegant grace, which are at the basis of their success. He returned numerous times to the aesthetic type of the 'Oriental woman,' whom he depicted with typically arched eyebrows and languid, almond-shaped eyes. These works are executed in a rather stiff manner. Portaels is seen as the principal painter who led the fashion for Orientalism in Belgium.

From the mid-1850s the Belgian government began to promote monumental art in Belgium. It provided financial assistance to artists on various projects. The promotion of monumental art dealing with episodes from the Belgian national history was regarded by the government of the young Belgian state as an important means of creating a national identity. The Belgian prime minister Charles Rogier was in particular in support of this movement. Portaels and Jean Baptiste van Eycken, also a pupil of François-Joseph Navez, helped launch the monumentalism movement in Belgium. They did this by introducing into Belgium new fresco techniques such as water glass painting, which they had studied abroad. Water glass painting is a technique of mural painting, intended to resist the effects of damp and pollution, that was invented and popular in the 19th century. It is a form of fresco painting. Portaels used the water glass technique at the old Chapel of the Brothers of Christian Doctrine (demolished in the 19th century). There, he and Victor Lagye created 20 historical scenes with this technique. Portaels also used this technique to decorate the tympanum of the Church of St. James on Coudenberg in Brussels with a scene showing the Blessed Virgin as a Comforter of the Needy. Portaels also decorated the drawing room of the Brussels home of his friend doctor Nollet with scenes from the history of medicine. He was assisted by Joseph Stallaert and Albert Roberti, also pupils of Navez. No further monumentalist works by Portaels are known. The monumentalist movement was subsequently taken up by artists such as Jan Swerts and Godfried Guffens who had come into contact with the movement in Germany.

Portaels eminent place in the history of contemporary Belgian art is due to his influence as a teacher of the next generation of Belgian artists such as Belgian painters Emile Wauters, Théo van Rysselberghe, Edouard Agneesens, Léon Frédéric, Jef Leempoels, Isidore Verheyden, Jean Delville, Xavier Mellery, Alfred Verhaeren, Antoine Van Hammée, Ernest Blanc-Garin, Jean Mayné, Josse Impens, Vanden Kerkhoven, Henri Vanderhecht, Eugène Joseph Adolphe Van Gelder, Fernand Toussaint, Albéric Coppieters, Louis Maeterlinck, Jacques de Lalaing, Jakob Smits, André Hennebicq, Camille Van Mulders, Anton Lacroix, Franz Meerts, Sophie Pir, Emile Charlet, Léon Houyoux, Dutch painters Jan Toorop and the Oyens brothers, the French painter Fernand Cormon, the sculptor Charles van der Stappen and the architects Ernest Van Humbeeck, and Charles Licot.

Gallery