His Irish home teacher Michel Breen first introduced him to history and antiquity, and more particularly Gothic art as an expression of Christianity.

It was at Leuven that he discovered the writings of Augustus Welby Pugin, the advocate of Gothicism in England and another enthusiastic Catholic.

[2] He received his basic artistic training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kortrijk (his teachers were L. Verhaegen and Jules Victor Génisson).

He took courses in landscape painting with Paul Lauters in Brussels, while the sculptor C. H. Geerts (1807–1855) – himself a pioneer of the Gothic Revival style – made him familiar with sculpture.

In imitation of Pugin and his followers, Bethune developed the idea that an artistic revival of the arts of the Christian world of the Middle Ages could inspire a new profoundly Christian/Catholic society.

Inspired by this, Bethune started a workshop for stained glass windows in 1854, together with his brother-in-law Eugène van Outryve d'Ydewalle , in the Hoogstraat in Bruges.

[3] In 1862, he was a co-founder of the "Saint Luke schools" (Sint-Lucasscholen) influenced by the architectural and decorative theories of Viollet le Duc.

[5] These schools were opened as a Catholic counterpart to the official Academies and trained architects in the religious spirit of the Gothic tradition.

These schools also offered an education for artisans that could work with stained-glass, wood carving, painting, gold- and silverwork...

Bethune also worked closely with Henri and Jules Desclée, creating illustrations for their print houses, such as the Society of St. John the Evangelist.

This, together with his strong Catholic inspiration and his association with the Gothic Revival movement in England, marks the difference between his school and the Neo-Gothic architecture advocated in Belgium by the Academies.