He studied in Antwerp. He moved to England in 1869 and made a name for himself for paintings of semi-nudes set against classical backdrops from ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt. One of his most famous paintings was The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888), based on an episode from the life of the infamously debauched Roman Emperor Heliogabalus.
In 1870 he married an English woman and moved to London, England.