Jan Bogaerts was born in Den Bosch, where he became a student of the symbolist painter Antoon van Welie (1866-1956) at the local Arts Academy. From 1899 on, Bogaerts continued his arts education at the Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp. In 1903, he returned to Den Bosch, continuing in the symbolist and art nouveau style fashionable in Belgium at the time. From 1906 until 1918, Bogaerts lived and worked around Teteringen, near Breda, specializing in still lifes, a genre he became most known for. The majority of still lifes came into existence in Wassenaar, where Bogaerts settled in 1922 and remained until his death in 1962.