His uncle, the sculptor Jules Printemps, a student of François Jouffroy at the École nationale des Beaux-Arts, supported his vocation and prepared him for the entrance examination to this school.

Around this period his work was largely part of the Symbolist movement and he experimented with a poetic or mythological vision and with the sensuality of the female nude.

Léon Printemps married in 1903 and frequently painted his family in an intimate tone, particularly his daughter Lucile whose death at the age of 6 touched him profoundly, as well as his son René.

His desire to meet Flemish masters prompted him to travel to Belgium and the Netherlands at the end of the nineteenth century, returning home with various studies.

In 1894 Printemps travelled to Belgium for the first time, presumably in the company of other students of Gustave Moreau, visiting Bruges, Ghent, Mechelen and Antwerp.