Belgian painter

Ypres 1798 – 1889 Brussels (Saint-Josse)

 

Painter, draughtsman and engraver of the Romantic period who specialised in town views (‘vedute’), sometimes combined with scenes from daily life.

He painted views from Belgium, France and Germany. Above all he loved sites from Spain and from Italy. He travelled as far as Morocco and Algiers in North Africa.

 

He studied for a short time under Jean-Joseph Beirens in Ypres, later under Guillaume Herreyns at the Academy of Antwerp.

 

François-Antoine lived in Ostend during his youth. In 1820 he founded in Ostend together with the painter Michel-Julien Van Cuyck the local Academy of Drawing and Architecture. According to the census of 1814 the family Bossuet was living in Ostend; our painter’s father had a liquor store. 

 

In 1843 Bossuet wrote a dissertation about perspective, a second one in 1872.

Between 1855 and 1876 he was a professor at the Academy of Brussels. One of his most famous students was the marine painter François Musin.

 

 

Bossuet painted both grand romanticized-realistic views of well-known towns, such as Granada, Venice, Rome or Bruges, and partial, zoomed-in views of streets or monuments, such as our painting.