Joseph Pierre Olivier Coomans was born in Brussels in 1816 and became known as one of Belgium's most celebrated 19th-century painters of historic subjects, genre scenes and landscapes. Coomans was also a noted illustrator.

He attended the Academies of both Ghent and Antwerp and studied painting with three noted Belgium painters of historic genre: Nicaise De Keyser, Gustave Wappers and Pieter Van Hanselaere. Coomans accompanied the French army to Algeria from 1843 to 1845, and to the Crimea, where he was able to experience the “Orient” first hand. He later journeyed also to Italy, Greece, and Turkey.

From 1856 to 1860 he lived in Naples, where exposure to antique painting would influence and inspire his own Pompeiian style. Coomans settled in Paris in 1860, where he exhibited regularly at the Paris Salons. He died on December 31, 1889 in Boulogne-on-Seine, France.

His brother, Jean-Baptiste Coomans, wrote "L'Histoire de Belgique."