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Tues-Fri & alternate weekends 10am-noon & 1-5pm; free; tel 02 508 32 11. Tram #93, #94 . The Musee Constantin Meunier , just off avenue Louise, about 500m beyond Victor Horta's Hotel Max Hallet, is at rue de l'Abbaye 59. It's housed in the unassuming home and studio of Brussels-born Constantin Meunier, who lived here from 1899 until his death at the age of 74 just six years later. Meunier began as a painter, but it's as a sculptor that he's best remembered, and the museum has an extensive collection of his dark and brooding bronzes. The biggest and most important pieces are in the room at the back, where a series of muscular men with purposeful faces stand around looking heroic - The Reaper and The Sower are typical. There are oil paintings in this room, too: gritty industrial scenes like the coalfield of Black Country Borinage and the gloomy dockside of The Port , one of Meunier's most forceful works. In the other rooms, you'll find a few watercolours and drawings as well as more statues honouring the working class and its sufferings - there's The Glass-blower, The Shrimp Fisherman and the hunched figure of Pain . Meunier was angered by the dreadful living conditions of Belgium's workers, particularly (like van Gogh before him) the harsh life of the coal miners of the Borinage. This anger fuelled his art, which asserted the dignity of the working class in a style that was to be copied by the Social Realists of his and later generations. According to Hobsbawm's Age of Empire , "Meunier invented the international stereotype of the sculptured proletarian."
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