The sculptor of workers’ dignity, monumental voice of Belgian social realism, praised by Van Gogh and Rodin.

Constantin Meunier was born in 1831 in Etterbeek, a municipality of the Brussels-Capital Region. He began his artistic training at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Brussels in the studio of sculptor Louis Jehotte, before joining, in his final year of studies, the studio of painter François-Joseph Navez, a representative of Belgian neoclassicism.

During the first decades of his career, Meunier devoted himself mainly to religious, historical and literary painting. From the 1870s onwards, the discovery of the Belgian industrial regions — the Borinage, the Walloon steel basins, the Antwerp docks — profoundly altered his artistic orientation. The artist henceforth devoted himself to representing the modern world of work, directly observing the lives of workers and the extreme conditions of their trades.

This turning point led Meunier towards a profoundly structured form of social realism. The figures of miners, smelters, dockers and porters became the emblems of his mature work. From the 1880s onwards, sculpture took an increasingly important place in his practice, his stay in Spain in 1882–1883 reinforcing his sense of volume and dramatic staging.

In the 1890s, Meunier conceived the Monument to Labour, a vast ensemble of statues and high reliefs devoted to the trades of modern industry, completed and installed on the Quai des Yachts in Laeken after his death. In 1899, he was elected member of the Class of Fine Arts of the Royal Academy of Belgium. His work was praised by his contemporaries, notably Vincent van Gogh and Auguste Rodin. Constantin Meunier died in Ixelles on 4 April 1905. His studio has become the Musée Constantin Meunier, which preserves the most important collection of his sculptures, models and paintings.