Louis Marie de Schryver was born to a family of Belgian descent. His father was a journalist with strong interests in the arts and encouraged his son’s precocious talent, studying under Gabriel Ferrier (1847-1910) with such success, that, aged thirteen in 1876, de Schryver exhibited two still lifes at the Paris Salon. He went on to exhibit regularly, receiving mentions in 1886 and 1889, medals in 1891 and 1896, and a silver medal at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900.

He exhibited abroad as early as 1876, receiving a mention at the Universelle Exposition in Sydney in 1879, and in 1893 was made an honorary member of the Canadian Society of Arts at Montreal. De Schryver was a distinctively Parisian painter, specialising in street scenes and in particular, flower sellers. During the height of de Schryver’s career, Paris was a wealthy, fashionable city, it’s broad boulevards thronged with the elegant ‘haute monde’ and it was this world that he so successfully portrayed. He was also in demand as a portrait painter amongst the city’s fashionable society and aristocracy. After the 1914-18 War, de Schryver turned more to landscape and still life; he lived in Ludwigshafen for five years and ceased to paint in the last fifteen years of his life.

His works can be found in museums in: Cambrai; Paris, Les Invalides, Musée de Luxembourg; Pontoise and Tourcoing.