When his father died when Joseph was 13 years old, his mother Catharina-Jozefina van Grimberghen opened a hardware store to secure an income for the family.

One of his teachers at the academy was Nicaise de Keyser, a key figure in the Belgian Romantic-historical school of painting.

After completion of his military service and his return to Antwerp in February 1843 Lies picked up his painting career.

The Antwerp city council commissioned in 1859 his largest painting entitled Baldwin VII, Count of Flanders.

He later came under the influence of his friend Henri Leys, a leading representative of the historical or Romantic school and a pioneer of the Realist movement in Belgium.

[4] Leys had distanced himself from the pathos and historical anecdotes of the Romantic school and the Rubens' influenced style of de Keyser.

[7] These innovations by Leys in style and subject matter left a deep mark on Lies' work.

His paintings carried titles such as Erasmus writing The Praise of Folly, Albrecht Dürer descends the Rhine, etc.

The landscapes in his compositions made after 1858 show in the distance villages, roads and fields, which bring to mind the later works of Leys.

[4] Lies included a view of an entire village in his The enemy approaches (1857, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp).