Jean Gouweloos was one of the more prominent pupils of famed Orientalist painter Jean-François Portaels (1818-1895), whom he studied under at the Académie Royale des Beaux Arts in Brussels from 1886 to 1888. Originally trained in printmaking by his uncle, Jean Gouweloos began his career as a lithographer and poster designer. He studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux Arts in Brussels under the Orientalist painter Jean-François Portaels (1818-1895).  Around 1893, Gouweloos and several young Belgian artists, feeling that the Flemish realist tradition was being cast aside by the Symbolist and Neo-Impressionist movements founded the group Le Sillon, organizing multiple exhibitions annually.