He is a pupil of Jean-François Portaels at the School of Fine Arts of Brussels from 1886. He studied under the direction of Fernand Cormon at the Ecole des Beaux - Arts in Paris . He co-founded and presided Le Sillon , an artistic visual arts movement founded in 1893 in Brussels . This circle was originally composed of young artists from the Brussels Academy who wanted to counterbalance neo-impressionism. They advocate a return to the rich tradition of realistic Flemish painting by privileging the effects of light. These painters use a rich and increasingly luminous palette and prefer to use thick layers of paint, the application of which approaches the palette knife more than the brush.

He exhibited at the first Salon d'art idealiste in 1896 and at the Salon des artistes français . He won a bronze medal at the Universal Exhibition of Paris in 1900. Gustave Max Stevens painted the child and the fragility of this state and organized in 1905 an exhibition on the theme "Art and the Child". Influenced first by the movement of the English pre - Raphaelites , it evolves following a trip in Algeria and Tunisia towards a more personal style close to Impressionism . He is considered a Belgian Art Nouveau painter and also produces Orientalist works. He contributed to L'Estampe Modern .