He studied in his home town at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts where Jean-François Portaels was one of his teachers.

Portaels further operated a private art studio in which he trained the next generation of Belgian painters.

He painted a number of interior scenes of inns and cabarets in the old part of Brussels.

Other interior scenes depict women doing domestic work or in conversation in what appear to be 16th- or 17th-century kitchens or rooms.

[1] Impens also painted some scenes of life in the countryside and people at work on the land.