Galerie Paul Prouté

Young Henry received his first drawing lessons from the Orientalist Jean-François Portaels. From 1884, he continued his studies at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, in Gérôme’s studio. Mainly active in the Brussels art scene in his early years, de Groux regularly exhibited alongside his former comrades, first with the Essor circle and then with the Groupe des XX, where he was elected at the end of 1886.
Despite his training with Portaels and Gérôme, Henry de Groux was by no means an academic painter, and very early on he came into contact with Symbolist circles. With his notoriously strong temperament, he was at odds with many of his contemporaries. A great critic of the academics, but also a fervent detractor of the post-impressionists, the painter expressed his artistic opinions crudely. This led to his exclusion from the Groupe des XX in 1890, after an altercation with Signac and Toulouse-Lautrec over Van Gogh.
Fascinated by fallen historical heroes such as Napoleon, Caesar and Nero, Henry de Groux went against the impulses of his time, devoting a large part of his output to military history painting – which had been declared obsolete by the Symbolists of his time, such as Huysmans – while at the same time rejecting the archaeological treatment typical of this genre, as adopted by Detaille and Meissonnier.