Born into a Jewish family in Riga (Latvia) in 1872, Ferdinand Schirren began trained under the leadership of Jef Lambeaux. He addressed painting at first with watercolor, when many young Belgian artists were sensitive to the experiences of the Fauves. He simplified the forms and returned them with large areas of color. In the 1910s, his works made him one of the major representatives of the movement that would later be called the Brabant Fauvism alongside Rik Wouters.