Born in Belgium, Victor De Pauw emigrated to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, with his family at the age of six. During the First World War he served in the Canadian Navy on a minesweeper. After the wars end, Victor De Pauw enrolled in the California School of Fine Arts (1919). In 1922, Victor De Pauw was awarded a scholarship to attend the famous Art Students League in New York. As a student there he supported himself by drawing portraits and caricatures for newspapers such as (The New York Times) of such well known celebrities as Ethel Barrymore, Clark Gable, James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and of the writers, Sherwood Anderson and Eugene ONeil. When The New Yorker started in 1924, Victor De Pauw was commissioned to create cover designs and other drawings.Victor De Pauws first one man exhibition of paintings, lithographs and drawings took place in New York in 1935 at the Leonard Clayton Gallery on 57th Street. During the following years his art was exhibited at many other shows in both New York and elsewhere. Early collectors of his art included Mrs. Nelson Rockefeller and Claire Booth Luce. 

Apart from his extensive career in prints and paintings, he was the originator of the comic, There Oughta be a Law. Showshoe Thompson was one of his illustrated books for children. He was responsible for several excellent New Yorker and Traveller magazine covers.

De Pauw settled down in the Hamptons in the 1940s where he spent the remaining years of his life.