There is a real irony to the story of one of Brussels’ best and best-known Art Nouveau mansions: It was designed by an architect who was no fan of the style and hadn’t worked in it before—and it is the only truly memorable work of his long career.
Jules Brunfaut, the architect, was a close friend of Edouard Hannon, a senior engineer with the giant Solvay chemical company and a serious amateur photographer. Hannon wanted an Art Nouveau mansion, and he wanted his close friend Brunfaut to design it, and Brunfaut did, after carefully studying the work of others.
Perhaps Brunfaut’s lack of real commitment to Art Nouveau accounts for my sense, looking at the exterior, of a building of older ideas to which Art Nouveau elements have been added, but any sense of that disappeared inside.
A few steps up lead to the dramatic central atrium and curved staircase, with allegorical paintings by Paul Albert Baudouin drawing visitors up the stairs. Our title image is a view down from the top of the stairs. It was also our One-Clue Mystery this week, correctly identified by George G.
The stained glass is another outstanding feature of the Hannon mansion, most of it by Raphaël Évaldre, a disciple of Louis Comfort Tiffany, and a collaborator with all the major Art Nouveau architects of Brussels.
Hannon died in 1931; the family continued living in the house until 1965, when Hannon’s daughter died. Like numbers of others in the area, the empty house was abandoned, vandalized, and eventually slated for demolition. It was saved largely through efforts of Brunfaut’s daughter, which led to the exterior being listed as a protected monument in 1976.
The local municipality, Saint-Gilles, bought the building in 1979. The interior was also protected in 1983, and the next five years saw a major repair and renovation project. From 1989 to 2014, it was occupied by a photo gallery that included exhibitions of photographs by Edouard Hannon. After more renovation, it opened as a museum in 2022.
Interior decoration and furniture, much of which is original, was commissioned from big-name designers as well, including Émile Gallé and Louis Majorelle.
An upper floor of the house is given over to exhibits of furniture and decor including their work for other projects, as well as furniture by other Art Nouveau luminaries including Pal Hankar, Gustave Serrurier-Bovy, Henry van de Velde and Paul Hankar. Below, a gallery of images from those exhibits.
Congratulations to George G, who identified the title image as this week’s One-Clue Mystery.
