LEYS, HENDRIK, BARON (1815-1869), Belgian painter, was born at Antwerp on the 18th of February, 1815. He studied under Wappers [1803-1874] at the Antwerp Academy. In 1833 he painted Combat d'un grenadier et d'un cosaque, and in the following year Combat de Bourguignons et Flamands. In 1835 he went to Paris where he was influenced by the Romantic movement. Examples of this period of his painting are Massacre des chevins de Louvain, Manage flamand, Le Roi des arbaltriers and other works. Leys was an imitative painter in whose works may rapidly be detected the schools which he had been studying before he painted them. Thus after his visit to Holland in 1839 he reproduced many of the characteristics of the Dutch genre painters in such works as Franz Floris se rendant a une fete (1845) and Service divin en Hollande (1850). So too the methods of Quentin Metsys [1466-1530] impressed themselves upon him after he had travelled in Germany in 1852. In 1862 Leys was created a baron. At the time of his death, which occurred in August 1869, he was engaged in decorating with fresco the large hall of the Antwerp Hotel de Ville.

Source:

Entry on the artist in the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.