Henri Leys, Hendrik Leys or Jan August Hendrik, Baron Leys (18 February 1815 – 26 August 1869) was a Belgian painter and printmaker. He was a leading representative of the historical or Romantic school in Belgian art and became a pioneer of the Realist movement in Belgium. His history and genre paintings and portraits earned him a European-wide reputation and his style was influential on artists in and outside Belgium.
Henri Leys was born in Antwerp as the son of Hendrik-Jozef-Martinus Leys and Maria-Theresia Craen. His father ran a printing business specializing in religious images printed from old copper plates. The first etching by Henri Leys was a funeral image made for his father's shop in 1831. Henry Leys was not very interested in school but was very keen on drawing. His parents supported his proclivity and let him study under a furniture painter who lived next door.
Leys subsequently studied at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts: from 1829 to 1832 he studied from the Antique and from 1832 to 1833 he studied drawing from life. During this period he started to work in the studio of his brother-in-law, the genre painter Ferdinand de Braekeleer.[1] One of Leys' teachers at the Academy was Mattheus Ignatius van Bree (1773–1839), the director of the Academy. According to a widely circulated story, during a lecture by van Bree on the draping of the gown and peplos of figures from antiquity Leys made a remark about van Bree's old-fashioned breeches. Van Bree did not appreciate the joke. But as the young hothead refused to apologize, the director expelled him from the Academy. Leys never returned to the Academy, not even as a teacher after he had achieved international success.[2]
From the start of his career Leys painted history and genre subjects.[1] During this period Leys often collaborated with the Belgian Romantic painter Gustaf Wappers (1803–1874). Both artists were interested in nationalistic subjects painted in styles that owe much to the example of 16th- and 17th-century Flemish painting. In 1835 Leys went to Paris where he visited the studio of Eugène Delacroix and met Paul Delaroche. The influence of Delaroche's Romanticism is evident in Leys' early work.[3] His precocious talent was manifested at the Brussels Salon of 1836 where he exhibited his Massacre of the magistrates of Louvain for which he received high praise.[4]
Leys married Adelaïde van Haren in 1841. The couple had two daughters and a son. The family Leys initially lived in the Hobokenstraat.[5] In 1855 Leys had a more spacious house built in the street, which now bears his name, and was then called the Statiestraat. From 1857 to 1861 he worked on murals to decorate the dining room of his house.[1]
Leys was together with Joseph Lies, Jozef Dyckmans, Ferdinand de Braekeleer, Gustaaf Wappers, Nicaise de Keyser and other Antwerp artists, one of founders of the Antwerpse Kunstenaarsvereniging