Alfons van Beurden

P. Verbraeken, Living Marble: Belgian Sculptors 1800-1930, Artimo, Brussels, 2017, pp. 104-105

A bronze version of this composition, characteristic of Van Beurden's oeuvre, is housed in the Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp. The present half-size marble reduction exhibits minor differences from the bronze, including the addition of a tree trunk and a loose hanging belt.

A student of Joseph Geefs at the Antwerp Academy from 1868 to 1882, Alfons van Beurden became a member of the traditionalist group of sculptors known as 'Als Ik Kan'. His career was focused in his native city of Antwerp, where he regularly exhibited and from whose institutions he received numerous important sculptural commissions, including for the façade of the Museum of Fine Arts as well as several bronzes for the Town Hall in Antwerp. Van Beurden became particularly renowned for his statues of children, often with sentimental or anecdotal subjects. He held a professorship at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts. His work was internationally renowned, and he exhibited several of his sculptures at the Royal Academy of Art in London, between 1887 and 1904.