The Death of the Wrestlers

La Mort d'Ompdrailles (The Death of the Wrestlers) 

I love this statue. I walk past it on the way to my French language school but I never knew who or what it commemorated. I'd misread the fading plaque and falsely believed it was dedicated to the creator of the Olympics. 

Only when I was researching the statue for my blog did I find out it actually says Createur d'Ompradailles

So it turns out the statue depicts a scene from a short story by the French author Leon Cladel. It's called the Death of the Wrestlers. I can't find a link between Cladel and Brussels. He was born in Montauban and spent the rest of his life in Paris.

The real credit goes to Charles van der Stappen, the sculptor who crafted the statue in the 1890s. I hadn't realised when I took the photograph that it stands on a plinth designed by the famous Victor Horta so unfortunately it's cropped out of the shot. I'll have to go back with a wider angle, until then here's Google Street View. The statue stands at the head of the Parc du Roi, just off the Avenue Louise


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If anybody is obsessed with EXIF information as I am, the photo was taken at 70mm, f10, 1/250, ISO100