Frans Depooter was born in 1898. He started working at the age of 13 in his father's studio where he met Anto Carte, Léon Navez, Léon Devos and Taf Wallet with whom he later founded the Nervia group. During his apprenticeship, he was close to Émile Motte at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Mons and then followed the teachings of the symbolist painters Jean Delville and Constant Montald at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. During this period, he received various awards, including the Gold Medal at the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1925. In 1928, he participated in the foundation of the Nervia group where his refined and poetic works were used to promote Walloon art. In 1923, he married Andrée Bosquet, born in Tournai and having received her artistic education in Mons, was a painter regularly invited by the Nervia group, with whom she exhibited on numerous occasions. Frans Depooter continued to defend figurative art in the 1930s, through his monographic exhibition at the Palais de Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1935, but also as a teacher. He became a professor at the École de Dessin et des Arts décoratifs in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean in 1938 before becoming its director in 1945. In 1969, the painter was awarded the Gold Medal of the European Artistic Merit by the Royal Academy of Belgium, before dying in Havelange in 1987.