The sculptor’s studio – Leo van AKEN, 1883

Oil on oak panel representing a seated model, posing for a sculptor making a statue of the Virgin, in the style of the late 15th century.
Around them a heterogeneous set of accessories, and a chest filled with tools.
Signed lower left Leo van AKEN, dated 1883.
He worked with Polydore Beaufaux, and excelled in painting historical subjects, but also in interior scenes, and the daily life of the people in the spirit of Struys, one of the main Belgian representatives of naturalist painting. Mentioned at the Paris Salon in 1898, he obtained the medal of 1st class for “human misery”, preserved in the national museum of Catalonia.