The statue was created by the renowned Belgian sculptor Charles Samuel.
Charles Samuel was a Belgian sculptor and medalist, born in Brussels (Belgium) on December 29, 1862 and died in Cannes (Alpes-Maritimes) on January 31, 1938.
He was the son of Luc Samuel, a money changer from Rotterdam, and Elisabeth Vaz. He married in Paris on December 17, 1900, Clotilde Kleeberg, a virtuoso pianist, who died on February 7, 1909, and then Juliette Blum, a Canadian painter and sculptor who died in 1931.
After an apprenticeship as a goldsmith with a friend of his father, the sculptor and medalist Léopold Wiener (himself initially trained by his brother, the sculptor Jacques Wiener), studying sculpture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels with Eugène Simonis, Joseph Jaquet and Charles Van der Stappen as teachers, then for the medal with the goldsmith-sculptor Philippe Wolfers, he began his career as a goldsmith and continued with a brilliant career as a sculptor-medalist from 1883. He was a member of L'Essor, a realist artistic circle in Brussels (1876 - 1883), and exhibited for the first time at the Salon de Ghent in 1883.
In 1905, he had a house-studio built for himself by the architect Ernest Van Humbeeck at 36 rue Washington in Ixelles. This studio should not be confused with another artist's studio located nearby at 28 and 30 rue Washington, built in 1889 by the architect Henri Van Dievoet as a tenement house for the stockbroker Félix Rodberg. This tenement studio was rented by Félix Rodberg to several artists: to the painter Louis Artan de Saint-Martin (1837-1890) around 1893 and to the painter Hippolyte Wulffaert (from 1897 to 1912).
Charles Samuel created works in stone, marble, bronze, and hardwood. He exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français in Paris. He died on January 31, 1938, and was buried on February 6, 1938, in the Dieweg cemetery in Uccle.
Some well-known works:
- La Fortune (1894), King Baudouin Foundation Collection.
- Monument to Charles De Coster (1894), in honor of Till the Mischievous and the author of the book The Legend and the Heroic, Joyful and Glorious Adventures of Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak in Flanders and Elsewhere, at the ponds of Ixelles, architect Franz De Vestel.
- Monument to Pierre Van Humbeeck (1901 - 1902), corner of Antoine Dansaert Street and Rempart-des-Moines Street in Brussels.
- Statue of the Brabançonne (1930), Place Surlet de Chokier in Brussels.
- The Lion in the Botanical Garden of Brussels.