1. Constantin Meunier made an important contribution to the development of modern art by elevating the image of the industrial worker, docker and miner to an icon of modernity.
13 Facts About Constantin Meunier
1. 2.
Constantin Meunier's work is a reflection of the industrial, social and political developments of his day and represents a compassionate and committed view of man and the world.
3.
Constantin Meunier was born in the traditionally working-class area of Etterbeek in Brussels.
4.
Constantin Meunier's family was poor and suffered from the negative economic impact caused by the Belgian Revolution which had taken place the year before Meunier's birth.
5.
Constantin Meunier began studying sculpture at the age of 14 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels in September 1845.
6.
Constantin Meunier studied under the sculptor Louis Jehotte from 1848.
7.
Constantin Meunier attended from 1852 the private studio of the sculptor Charles-Auguste Fraikin.
8.
Constantin Meunier therefore gave up sculpture in favour of painting which he practised almost exclusively for the next thirty years.
9.
Constantin Meunier's first exhibit was a plaster sketch, The Garland, shown at the Brussels Salon in 1851.
10.
About 1880 Constantin Meunier was commissioned to illustrate those parts of Camille Lemonnier's description of Belgium in Le Tour du monde which referred to miners and factory-workers, and produced In the Factory, Smithery at Cockerill's, Melting Steel at the Factory at Seraing, Returning from the Pit, and The Broken Crucible.
11.
Constantin Meunier was one of the co-founders of the Societe Libre des Beaux-Arts of Brussels and was a member of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers.
12.
Constantin Meunier was a freemason and a member of the lodge Les Amis Philanthropes of the Grand Orient of Belgium in Brussels.
13.
In 1939, the Musee Constantin-Meunier dedicated to his work was opened in the last house in which Meunier lived and worked, in Ixelles, Brussels.