Jean PORTAELS (Vilvorde, 1818 - Schaerbeek, 1895)

Jean Portaels was a painter of historical scenes, religious compositions, orientalist scenes and portraits. He came from a bourgeois family and may be considered a transition painter, his style being between the neo-classicism of Navez, who he studied under and the romanticism of Wappers (1803-1860).

However, the way he treated his subjects as well as his classical vision of exotic themes meant that Portaels had only moved half way from conventional paintings. He played a vital role on the Belgian cultural scene of the 19th century.
As the main representative of the travelling orientalist painters in The Museum of Fine Arts, Portael's painting evokes an image of the Orient, as dreamed up by the souls of the romantics. Pierre-Jean Van der Ouderaa (1841-1915) was also strongly attracted to the atmosphere of those sunny lands.

In 1844, a little more than ten years after Delacroix (1798-1863), he travelled around North Africa and brought back a lot of sketches inspired by patterns and sources of reference gathered during his career. The themes he dealt with, the way he applied light to his works, his free-moving touch, all these are the result of the impact of romanticism and exoticism that he brought in his wake.