ART: The Belgian Artist Fernand Touissant

 The Belgian artist for Fernand Toussaint was  born in 1873 to a cultured, upper-middle class family in Brussels.

His artist talent was recognized at an early age and cultivated by his family He was encouraged by his parents to develop his skills.




He began studying art with the famous Jean Francois Portaels, and attending the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts at the age of fifteen.

At the age of 18, he left home to study in Paris, France, where he studied with many famous artists. 

He made a living as a landscape painter and worked making commercial posters for official events and celebrations.

But his passion was female portraits, both oils and watercolors. He presented the female form in a rich and elegant manner. 


He was commissioned by the wealthy families to paint portraits of the women of the family dressed in expensive clothes in the latest of fashion. The gazes of these women are honest, barely provocative and dreamy.

He is famous for his post-impression paintings of women. Commercial posters of his work were in high demand at the turn of the twentieth century. 

He died in 1956 in the Brussels suburb of Elsene.

Belgium won its independence from The Netherlands in 1830 and 1831, but its artistic links to that country and France remained strong. However, between 1890 and the First World War Belgium showed a rich blossoming of artistic talent that was distinctly its own. While Toussaint, as other young student painters, accepted a solid grounding in the traditional academic techniques, he, as his fellow students, was encouraged to move away from a limited or narrow understanding and use of those techniques. Toussaint’s brushwork in A Portrait shows this independence as well as the role the use of color played in his training. Toussaint has rendered this work in loose, skillful brush strokes creating wonderful color harmonies that convey an intimate mood. He was a careful handler of flesh tints and costume and drapery. The face posse’s wonderful naturalness. The influence of Alfred Stevens, the Belgium portrait painter, is seen in the quiet charm, depth, and sensitivity Toussaint has brought to the portrait of this lovely woman. Her gaze is clear and open and suggests a person who enjoys the company of others.