BARON HENDRIK

See also:

• BARON HENDRIK LEYS (1815-1869)

LEYS (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 " (185o) . 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 .