Dillens,_Julien

Dillens, Julien (1849-1904), Belgian sculptor, was born at Antwerp on the 8th of June 1849, son of a painter. He studied under Eugène Simonis at the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts. In 1877 he received the prix de Rome for “A Gaulish Chief taken Prisoner by the Romans.” At Brussels, in 1881, he executed the groups entitled “Justice” and “Herkenbald, the Brussels Brutus.” For the pediment of the orphanage at Uccle, “Figure Kneeling” (Brussels Gallery), and the statue of the lawyer Metdepenningen in front of the Palais de Justice at Ghent, he was awarded the medal of honour in 1889 at the Paris Universal Exhibition, where, in 1900, his “Two Statues of the Anspach Monument” gained him a similar distinction. For the town of Brussels he executed “The Four Continents” (Maison du Renard, Grand’ Place), “The Lansquenets” crowning the lucarnes of the Maison de Roi, and the “Monument t’ Serclaes” under the arcades of the Maison de l’Etoile, and, for the Belgian government, “Flemish Art,” “German Art,” “Classic Art” and “Art applied to Industry” (all in the Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels), “The Laurel” (Botanic Garden, Brussels), and the statue of “Bernard van Orley” (Place du petit Sablon, Brussels). Mention must also be made of “An Enigma” (1876), the bronze busts of “Rogier de la Pasture” and “P. P. Rubens” (1879), “Etruria” (1880), “The Painter Leon Frederic” (1888), “Madame Leon Herbo,” “Hermes,” a scheme of decoration for the ogival façade of the hôtel de ville at Ghent (1893), “The Genius of the Funeral Monument of the Moselli Family,” “The Silence of Death” (for the entrance of the cemetery of St Gilles), two caryatides for the town hall of St Gilles, presentation plaquette to Dr Heger, medals of MM. Godefroid and Vanderkindere and of “The Three Burgomasters of Brussels,” and the ivories “Allegretto,” “Minerva” and the “Jamaer Memorial.” Dillens died at Brussels in November 1904.

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