Charles Auguste Fraikin

Work by Charles Auguste Fraikin is recorded in the collections of Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, Museum of Fine Arts Ghent (MSK) and Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. Distinctions recorded are Knight of the Legion of Honour and Commander of the Order of Leopold.

Charles Auguste Fraikin was born in Herentals, United Kingdom of the Netherlands (modern-day Belgium), on 14 June 1817. He took drawing lessons from the age of twelve at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. When he was thirteen, his father died. Fraikin therefore opted for practical training as a pharmacist. He worked in the pharmacy of Auguste-Donat De Hemptinne, brother-in-law of François-Joseph Navez, painter and director of the Brussels Academy, who discovered his talent and encouraged him to continue in the arts. At the Brussels Salon in 1845, Fraikin won a gold medal for the sculpture L'amour captif. Marble versions of it were later placed in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium and the Hermitage. It brought him to the attention of the Belgian royal family, which led to new commissions. Among other things, he made a statue of King Leopold I. In addition to being a sculptor, Fraikin was also curator of the sculpture department of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. At the end of his life, he had donated his collection of plaster models to the city of Herentals. He witnessed the opening of his museum in the Lakenhal of Herentals. He died on 22 November 1893 in Schaerbeek. After a church funeral, he was buried close to the choir of Saint-Waldetrudis church.

Brussels: • Allegory of the City of Brussels (1848), Place Rouppe/Rouppeplein • Monument to the Counts of Egmont and Horn (1864), Square du Petit Sablon/Kleine Zavelsquare • Eleven portal images for Brussels' Town Hall • Mausoleum of Félix de Mérode in the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula • Funerary statue of Ferdinand Nicolay at Laeken Cemetery Dendermonde: • Monument of Father Pierre-Jean De Smet (1878), Church of Our Lady, Dendermonde Ostend: • Mausoleum for Louise of Orléans (1859), Sint-Petrus-en-Pauluskerk

• Illustration — Triumph of Bacchus • Illustration — Sleep or Morpheus • Illustration — Statue of Pieter-Jan de Smet • Illustration — Tomb of Queen Louise • Illustration — Detail of the Monument to Egmont and Horn • Illustration — Brussels' Town Hall portal

The following is established of the heading itself.

On origins, the institutional record states the following. Fraikin died in 1893 at Schaerbeek. It is also recorded that charles Auguste Fraikin was born in 1817 at Herentals.