Guillaume Charlier - Monument au pêcheur

A meeting with the Brussels collector Henri Van Cutsem, who bequeathed his collection to the City of Tournai in 1903, was a huge opportunity for Guillaume Charlier, a sculptor of humble origins. In 1885, the patron of the arts first built Charlier a beautiful studio on Avenue de Cortenberg in Brussels before inviting him and his wife to move into their own home – now the Musée Charlier – on Avenue des Arts in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode. Despite his own upward social mobility, Guillaume Charlier continued to depict the plight of the underprivileged. He developed a realistic approach to art with strong social connotations.

Discovering Guillaume Charlier at the Musée des Beaux-Arts is first and foremost an immersion in the life and work of an artist who was active at the end of the nineteenth century before gradually falling into obscurity, but whose sculptures are a features of the city's public spaces. All his life, he portrayed people living "on the margins" of society : the workers, the common people from whom he came. Erected as a tribute to the working classes, this monument shows a fisherman setting off to work, while the four high-relief sculptures on the base illustrate the different phases of his trade : departure, the open sea, the return and the market. The fisherman's stance in front of the viewer was a novelty, as was the material used – bronze – which was normally used for statues of heroes or important people. The "Cercle des XX" society of which Charlier was a member, immediately acclaimed this sculpture as a masterpiece.