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| Belgium Currency - 500 Francs banknote |
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| 500 Francs note |
Belgian banknotes, Belgian paper money, Belgian bank notes, Belgium banknotes, Belgium paper money, Belgium bank notes.
Obverse: Portrait of Constantin Meunier, Belgian painter and sculptor at left center; under-print of two coal miners, drill head and mine conveyor tower at center right. Fragment from the painting "The Return of the Miners" - Constantin Meunier (1831-1905) - oil on canvas, Meunier Museum, Brussels.
Reverse: Geometric circular industrial and scientific multi-faceted designs. A turbine.
Watermark: Portrait of King Baldwin I.
Dimensions: 148 x 75 mm.
Work by: Yvon Adam; Manfred Hürrig; Anne Velghe (Inv. - Sketch authors, designers); H. Decuyper (Sc. - Engraver).
Signatures: Pierre van Droogenbroeck (De Schatbewaarder - Le Tresorier); Alfons Verplaetse (De Gouverneur - Le Gouverneur).
Date of issue: 4 Oct. 1979.
Texts: Banque Nationale de Belgique. Cinq Cents Francs. Nationale Bank van Belgie. Vijfhonderd Frank. National Bank of Belgium. Five Hundred Francs. Le contrefacteur est puni des travaux forcés (Art.173 du Code Penal). Denamaker wordt met dwangarbeid gestraft (Art.173 van het Strafwetboek).
Belgian banknotes - Belgium paper money
1978-1997 Issue
Constantin Meunier
Constantin Meunier (12 April 1831 – 4 April 1905) was a Belgian painter and sculptor whose important contribution to modern art is the introduction of the image of the industrial worker, docker and miner, as 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.
Constantin Meunier was born in the traditionally working-class area of Etterbeek, near Brussels.
His first exhibit was a plaster sketch, The Garland, shown at the Brussels Salon in 1851. Soon afterwards, on the advice of the painter Charles de Groux (fr), he abandoned the chisel for the brush. 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).
About 1880 he 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 (1882), Returning from the Pit, and The Broken Crucible (1884).
In 1882 he was employed by the government to copy Pedro de Campaña's Descent from the Cross at Seville, and in Spain he painted such characteristic pictures as The Café Concert, Procession on Good Friday, and The Tobacco Factory at Seville (Brussels Gallery). On his return to Belgium he was appointed professor at the Louvain Academy of Fine Arts.
In 1885 he returned to sculpture and produced The Puddler, The Hammerer (1886), Firedamp (1889, Brussels Gallery), Le Débardeur (modeled 1885; many castings made 1889–1905), Ecce Homo (1891), The Old Mine-Horse (1891), The Mower (1892), The Glebe (1892), the monument to Father Damien at Louvain (1893), Puddler at the Furnace (1893), the scheme of decoration for the Botanical Garden of Brussels in collaboration with the sculptor Charles van der Stappen (1893), The Horse at the Pond, in the square in the north-east quarter of Brussels, and two unfinished works, the Monument to Labour and the Émile Zola monument, in collaboration with the French sculptor Alexandre Charpentier.
The Monument to Labour, which was acquired by the State for the Brussels Gallery, comprises four stone bas-reliefs: Industry, The Mine, Harvest, and the Harbour; four bronze statues: The Sower, The Smith, The Miner, and the Ancestor; and a bronze group, Maternity.
He was one of the co-founders of the Société Libre des Beaux-Arts of Brussels and was a member of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers.
He was a freemason, and a member of the lodge Les Amis Philanthropes of the Grand Orient of Belgium in Brussels.
Meunier died in Brussels on 4 April 1905.