Studio: international art (35.1905)

Constantin Meunier

some rest.

It then came about
that Camille Lemonnier,
who was commissioned
to describe Belgium for
the French review “Le
Tour du Monde,” asked
Constantin Meunier to
illustrate the pages devoted
to the workers in factories
and mines.

This was like a revelation
to him ; he had, so to
speak, a sudden intuition
of the new aesthetic vision
which he was to bestow on
his country and on his age;
the aesthetics of the people,
“the aesthetics of work”

“ From this moment,”
wrote M. Dumont-
Wilden, in the “ Petit-
Bleu,” “ it was a new

fessor as a god ! To please him, to get into his
good graces, I made no objection to anything;
for I did all the odd jobs, and even lighted the
stove with infinite care.”

In 1851, at the age of twenty, Meunier exhibited
a plaster sketch, La Guirlande, at the Brussels
Salon. This was but an attempt, which could not
satisfy him; he aspired to a more direct study of
Nature, to the observation of a model who does
not pose. He entered the Atelier St. Luc, one
of those private studios where a few young
artists club together to pay for a model and for
lighting. He there met friends, enthusiastic, inde-
pendent comrades, and the painters attracted him
towards painting. Led by Ch. Degroux, “ the
painter of realistic sorrows,” he decided to aban-
don the chisel for the brush.

A certain amount of success encouraged him
at the outset; but this success did not make much
noise, and, above all, was not very lucrative.
Constantin Meunier had married young ; his
family was numerous, and the anxieties of mate-
rial existence often tormented his working hours.
He had to bring himself to accept many distaste-
ful tasks, and was even reduced to “drawing
saints for printed handkerchiefs.”

At last, after long years
of struggle, his appoint-
ment as director of the
Academie des Beaux-Arts
at Louvain allowed him

“ l’industrie ” (Photograph by P. Becker) by Constantin meunier

Meunier who was evolved. It seemed as though
his whole previous life had been but a long pre-
paration, an unconscious apprenticeship. From
this moment forward his work developed with sur-
prising and methodical rapidity. The grief caused
by the death of his two sons, far from breaking the
artist’s strength, threw him entirely upon his work,
and made his art deeper, sadder, more human than
ever. After various pictures, water colours and
drawings, he returned to sculpture ; and then—
first in his studio at Louvain, and afterwards (when
he had quitted that official post, which soon became
a burden) in his studio in the Rue Albert de
Latour, there was feverish and yet regular work,
work which occupied every moment, and was in a
few years to result in an immense achievement.”

It is unnecessary to recall to my readers’
memory the greater number of these noteworthy
productions; they may almost be called popular.
But we cannot do better than conclude this brief
notice by quoting the end of the funeral oration
pronounced by M. Verlant :—

“ Constantin Meunier, passing on one occasion
beyond the bounds of his realistic art, determined
to consecrate its expression in a mystic symbol.
And he sculptured the Man of Sorrows, the