Eugène Jules Joseph Baron Laermans (1864-1940) was a Belgian painter.
He was born in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek. At the age of eleven, he contracted meningitis, which left him deaf and nearly mute (although some sources say he was born deaf).
This concentrated his attention on his sense of sight, and led to his decision to become a painter.
He enrolled at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in 1887, where he studied with Jean-François Portaels and was a great admirer of the paintings of Félicien Rops.
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