Ma vie est toute de travail et de rêve.

(My life is all about work and dreams.)

The simple, earnest words you see above characterize as nothing else could the life of the man whose art you have come here to study and admire. His was in truth an existence fraught with work and dreams. The work was arduous, the dreams full of gentle, mystic fervour. Few artists have encountered so many obstacles. Ill health, poverty, prolonged obscurity, each fell to his lot in ample portion, and yet in due course he surmounted all. Though he lived to realize in goodly number his conceptions of form, colour, and movement, he exclaimed toward the end, with kindling eye and eager tone, “What I would do surpasses by far all I have done.” He was never satisfied. He remodelled statue after statue, and group after group, striving to get closer and closer to the outward verity and the inner vision. He left behind him a valiant, sombre army in bronze and plaster, yet, like the true creative spirit he was, his brain still teemed with thoughts and themes never to find definite shape and semblance. (1.)

A portrait of Belgian painter and sculptor Constantin Meunier, probably taken several years before his death.

Constantin Meunier: 1831-1905 …was a Belgian painter and sculptor. He 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. His 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.

Early Life and Education…Constantin Meunier was born in the traditionally working-class area of Etterbeek in Brussels. His 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. Meunier’s father committed suicide when he was just four years old.

He began studying sculpture at the age of 14 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels in September 1845. He studied under the sculptor Louis Jehotte (1804–84) from 1848. He also attended from 1852 the private studio of the sculptor Charles-Auguste Fraikin. While he encountered modestly success as a sculptor, his encounter with Gustave Courbet’s social realist painting The Stone Breakers in 1851 caused him to doubt the ability of sculpture to adequate represent the contemporary social and artistic issues that were of concern to him. He therefore gave up sculpture in favour of painting which he practised almost exclusively for the next thirty years.

Career…Meunier’s first exhibit was a plaster sketch, The Garland, shown at the Brussels Salon in 1851. His first important painting, The Salle St Roch (1857), was followed by a series of paintings including A Trappist Funeral (1860), Trappists Ploughing (1863), in collaboration with Alfred Verwee, Divine Service at the Monastery of La Trappe (1871) and episodes of the German Peasants’ War (1878),^] as well as of Belgium’s own historical Peasants’ War. -Wikipedia (2024) continues

Albert-Edouard Drains, known professionally as Alexandre: 1855-1925

The following historical chronology of the photographer appears courtesy of the Directory of Belgian Photographers hosted online by Fotomuseum Antwerp. (FOMU)

Life dates

Paris [F], 1855 – Nice [F], 1925  

Activity

1897 * – 1910 / Bruxelles, Place du Musée, 14

Predecessor: Alexandre [Drains] Veuve A. & Fils

Albert Edouard Drains, ° 2.3.1855; + 16.5.1925. Arrived at this address on 25.5.1897. Photograph dealer. Collotype, reproduction of paintings in the Royal Museums; in 1895/1896 and 1898, platinum prints reproducing drawings by Fernand Khnopff (see that name), retouched and signed by the latter. Renowned pictorialist: landscapes, seascapes, studies of military life, nudes, portraits of artists. Enlargements of negatives for the “Compagnie du Congo pour le commerce et l’industrie” in 1890. Gave a slide shown comprising 100 images at the “Cercle d’études photographiques et scientifiques de Bruxelles” on 17.11.1896, including his genre study “The Anatomy Lesson”.

Views of the exhibition halls at the “Exposition Internationale et Coloniale” in Brussels – Tervueren, 1897, reproduced in collotype. Also in the context of the 1897 exhibition, Alexandre made 22 short films under the auspices of the “Société Optique Belge”, founded in February 1897, making him one of the very first Belgian cinematographers. Member ABP from 15.10.1886. One of the two Belgian members of the Linked Ring, the English pictorialist group, 1893-1908, under the pseudonym “Admiral” (the other member being Hector Colard). Honorary member of the “Cercle d’Art Photographique l’Effort”, 1901-1905.

1904 – 1908 : Bruxelles, Montagne de la Cour, 79

“Photographer to Her Majesty the Queen of the Belgians and of the Congo Free State. Collotype, photogravure. Reproduction of paintings in the Royal Museums” (Mertens, 1900).

1909 – 1914 : Bruxelles, Rue Coudenberg, 56<09-10>, 56 bis or 70<11-14>

Also photograph dealer at this address. Still listed in the “Almanach de Bruxelles” in 1924.

1. Excerpt: Biographical: Constantin Meunier, by Christian Brinton, 1914: Special Exhibition Catalogue, Museum of Art, Detroit, p. 7 (the exhibition also travelled to the City Art Museum of St. Louis the same year)