A Life Shaped by Light and Shadow In the quiet corners of Kapelle-op-den-Bos, a young boy watched his father tend to animals as a veterinarian, yet his own eyes were drawn toward the charcoal and the sketchpad. It took much persuasion for the elder Larock to permit his son to seek evening lessons at the municipal academy in Mechelen, but the spark of talent could not be extinguished. As he grew, the boy’s ambitions led him to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, where he balanced the rigors of formal study with the practical labor of working in the studios of Henri Verbuecken. This peri…