François Huygensartist • painterBrussel 1820-1908 Kortenberg (België)

Trained at the Brussels Academy, François Huygens debuted around 1838 with Jean-Baptiste Robie as a porcelain painter. He then specialized in hunting still lifes with dead game and show still lifes with fruit and flowers. Gradually, his compositions became more natural and he also incorporated wild flowers into his bouquets, which sometimes seem to have been deposited carelessly on the forest floor. Together with the painter Louis Dubois, Huygens was one of the driving forces behind this realism in Belgium, based on his own observation instead of academic rules