Fernand Toussaint Biography

Fernand Toussaint (1873-1956) was a Belgian painter and illustrator in the 19th-century Belgian School. He was born in Brussels in 1873 into an upper-middle-class family of upper-middle class. When his parents discovered his talent in drawing, they helped him to develop it in full.

At age 15, he began studying art with Jean-François Portaels at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts and three years later left for Paris to continue his studies there. He studied under the well-known Belgian portraitist Alfred Stevens. He specialised in painting portraits of women, still lifes and cityscapes, in the Impressionist, Art Nouveau, and Post-Impressionist styles. His works include paintings, water-colours and posters. He is also a famed artist for depicting beautiful floral still lifes and interiors, coastal views and seascapes. In this genre, his paintings have to be compared with the painters of his epoque the likes of Constant Permeke and Adrien le Mayeur de Merprès, who influenced his own manner. One of the Belgian art critics of that time, Camille Lemonnier, said about Toussaint that he was "one of the painters that broadened the horizon of the peaceful and intimate landscape"

Beginning in 1895, Toussaint had been receiving a lot of orders for commercial posters for different official events. He died in the Brussels suburb of Elsene.