Jan Frans De Boever

Who was Jan Frans De Boever?

Jan Frans De Boever was a Flemish Symbolist painter. He was very successful during most of his lifetime, and he considered himself as one of the best painters ever in his country. His megalomaniac character made him a solitary and isolated artist, whose work moved the last few decades to the U.S.A. where became a beloved artist.

Jan Frans De Boever received his training in Ghent at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts under Louis Tytgadt, whose niece he married.

Tytgadt provided him with an introduction to important circles in his city, and he became a celebrated and well-known artist, a recognised celebrity at official exhibitions in Ghent, Antwerp, Brussels and Liege.

Suddenly in about 1909 he modified his style radically, painting licentious women and prostitutes in morbid and bizarre settings. Skeletons, death and eroticism began to dominate his paintings. Semi-clothed women were depicted as servants of the devil, creating an atmosphere of evil. Man is shown as woman's toy, a languid object submitting himself to her slightest caprice.

In 1914 he started to illustrate Charles Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du mal" for the wealthy art-collector Speltinckx.