Julien Dillens

Who was Julien Dillens?

Julien Dillens was a Belgian sculptor born in Antwerp, the son of the painter Hendrick Joseph Dillens.

Dillens studied under Eugène Simonis at the Académie Royale des Beaux-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, and the statue of the lawyer Hippolyte Metdepenningen in front of the Palais de Justice at Ghent, he was awarded the medal of honor 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, The Lansquenets crowning the lucarnes of the Maison de Roi, and the Monument at Everard '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, The Laurel at the Botanical Garden of Brussels, and the statue of Bernard van Orley.