Balthasar Paul Ommeganck

He was registered in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke as a pupil of the respected painter Hendricus Josephus Antonissen from 1767.

At the same time he also attended classes at the Antwerp Academy where he obtained a second prize for drawing after the Antique in March 1771.

[2][5] Artists who would later join included Mattheus Ignatius van Bree, Maria Jacoba Ommeganck, Marten Waefelaerts and many others.

Ommeganck had not wished to participate in the Paris competition but the painting was submitted by a friend without his knowledge.

[2] In 1800 he was invited to become together with Willem Jacob Herreyns a teacher of the members of the newly established Genootschap der Kunsten ((Society for the arts')).

The members undertook to meet to show and discuss their works and enjoy the tuition of the older generation of painters.

[6] His students included Jan Baptiste de Jonghe, Frédéric Théodore Faber, Pieter Martinus Gregoor, Jacob van Kouwenhoven, Hendrik Aarnout Myin, Ignatius Josephus van Regemorter, Adrianus de Visser, Eugène Joseph Verboeckhoven, Julien-Joseph Ducorron and his sister Maria Jacoba Ommeganck.

This he combined with an interest in representing atmospheric conditions and the warm light of the rising or setting sun.

[8] He also made a few portraits such as that of the Painter Jean-Baptiste Berré (Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp).