Willem Leo Jan Dolphyn was born in Antwerp, the son of the painter Victor Dolphyn, and demonstrated an early aptitude for drawing from childhood. His formative years were shaped both by his father’s example and by extensive travel undertaken as a teenager, when he journeyed through the Mediterranean and Middle East. These experiences broadened his visual and cultural awareness before he enrolled at the Antwerp Academy, later becoming, at seventeen, one of the youngest students admitted to the National Higher Institute for Fine Arts.

These early encounters with Eastern culture developed into a sustained intellectual and visual interest, evident in both his collecting and the carefully constructed environment of his studio. Alongside his painting practice, Dolphyn taught in Mol, undertook illustration work, and briefly ran a pub, maintaining a varied professional life prior to his artistic breakthrough. This came in 1968 with a sold-out exhibition at the Gebo Gallery, which secured his reputation and enabled him to devote himself fully to painting.

From the 1980s onwards, he exhibited regularly in London with W.H. Patterson, establishing a strong international following and a long-standing relationship with British collectors. Working from his Antwerp studio for over five decades, Dolphyn produced approximately 2,500 paintings, predominantly still lifes informed by his extensive collection of historic objects, textiles, ceramics, and artefacts gathered over a lifetime.