As a child Vinck took drawing lessons with the painter Karel Schippers, the fiancé of a cousin.

Vinck subsequently traveled with a fellow painter to Paris where he copied old masters in the Louvre.

His father's employer generously offered to fund Vinck so that he could accompany the winner Pauwels to Italy.

The painter Florent Mols (1811–1896) invited Vinck to join him on a trip to the Middle East.

The painter accepted the invitation and subsequently spent a year travelling in Egypt and Palestine.

There Vinck got included in the small circle of students and assistants of Henri Leys, at the time the leading Belgian Romantic painter who enjoyed an international reputation.

[4] He further obtained commissions from abroad including for more Stations of the Cross for the Saint-Nicholas Church in Boulogne-sur-Mer in France and St Cuthbert's, Earls Court in London.

He was also drawn towards the then popular Orientalism and created a number of Orientalist paintings inspired by his travels in the Middle East.

In the Lunch at the foot of the pyramids, Gizeh Vinck sets out the principal figures in an almost theatrical way, capturing in strong chiaroscuro the fascination and reservation with which East began to meet West at the end of the 19th century, a time when tourism became a fashionable pursuit for the European and North American middle classes.