Fountain with Kneeling Youths
Artist / maker
George Minne (sculptors)Date
ca. 1905, ca. 1927 - ca. 1930Period
19th centuryCollection
Museum of Fine Arts Ghent
The George Minne collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Ghent centres around the plaster model for the Fountain with Kneeling Youths, which is the artist’s most important work. This “Narcissus fountain”, as Karel van de Woestijne famously called it, consists of five identical representations of the introverted, kneeling youth. Minne was also a deeply religious artist and the fountain…
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The George Minne collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Ghent centres around the plaster model for the Fountain with Kneeling Youths, which is the artist’s most important work. This “Narcissus fountain”, as Karel van de Woestijne famously called it, consists of five identical representations of the introverted, kneeling youth. Minne was also a deeply religious artist and the fountain should therefore be interpreted in this sense. Minne’s sketchbooks contain drawings, in which the fountain is shown in a liturgical context, reminding us for example of The Fountain of Life on the central panel of The Ghent Altarpiece by the Van Eyck Brothers (Saint-Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent). The ensemble was sculpted in white marble by Minne’s workshop for the German collector Karl Ernst Osthaus and originally stood in the hall of the Folkwang Museum in Hagen (it can now be found in Essen). The bronze group in the city centre of Ghent dates from the 1930s and was cast in a style that is closer to Art Deco. Minne kept the fountain that is currently in the museum’s collection in his workshop until his death. His daughter, Mrs Marie Gevaert-Minne, donated it to the museum in 1982.
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