François-Joseph Navez was a Belgian neo-classical painter.
Navez was born in Charleroi. He was a pupil of Jacques-Louis David. He spent five years in Italy between 1817 and 1822. Between 1835 and 1862 he was the director of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.
He was a very successful portrait painter. He also painted many mythological and historic subjects.
The orientalist painter Jean-François Portaels was his pupil (and son-in-law).
Jean Carolus, the Belgian painter of genre scenes and interiors, was a protege of François-Joseph Navez.
Navez was elected a fourth class member of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands in 1826, he became a supernumerary associate in 1841 and resigned in 1851. He died in 1869 in Brussels.
