Constantin Meunier

CONSTANTIN MEUNIER (Belgium, 1831–1905).
"The Miner."
Bronze relief.
Signed.
Measurements: 17 x 22 cm.

Meunier initially trained with his brother, the engraver Jean-Baptiste Meunier, and then enrolled in 1845 at the Brussels Academy, where he was mentored by the sculptor Louis Jehotte beginning in 1848. Later, between 1851 and 1857, he worked in a private studio under the guidance of the sculptor Charles-Auguste Fraikin and the painter François Joseph Navez. In the afternoons, he attended painting classes taught by Charles de Groux at the Studio of Saint Luke, who had a significant influence on Meunier. He befriended artists such as Louis Dubois and Félicien Rops, with whom he would found the Société Libre des Beaux-Arts (Free Society of Fine Arts) in Brussels in 1868, a leading exponent of avant-garde realism. He began his first sculptures in the 1880s. He paid special attention to the world of mining, as seen in works such as “The Firedamp Explosion” (1887, based on a real tragedy), “The Miners’ Wives,” and “The Return of the Miners.” He worked almost exclusively in bronze, imbuing his figures of workers with a sense of their humanity and dignity. In 1887, he was appointed professor at the Academy of Leuven and later at the Academy of Brussels. He then began a series of austere sculptures dedicated to labor, which he intended to call the Monument to Labor. The series remained unfinished, as he completed only four reliefs (Industry, The Harvest, The Port, and The Mine), crowned with four symbolic figures (The Blacksmith, The Sower, The Ancestor, and The Miner); the monument was installed much later, in 1930, in Trooz Square in Brussels. In 1896, he presented a retrospective exhibition of his work at the Art Nouveau Gallery in Paris, with the help of Henry Van de Velde. He was later well received in Germany and Austria. Elected a member of the Royal Academy of Belgium (1900), he received several awards as a painter (bronze medal at the 1889 World’s Fair) and as a sculptor (Grand Prize at the 1889 and 1900 World’s Fairs, Officer of the Order of Leopold, and Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1889). His home in Brussels was converted into a museum as early as 1900, a few years before his death, which occurred while he was working on a sculptural group titled *Fecundity*, in honor of the writer Émile Zola.