The Rion family, or art as a legacy: Gustave, Lucien and Claire
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 15 hours ago
There are families in Brussels whose history is intimately bound up with the art of their time. The Rion family is one of them. Little known, almost forgotten, they nonetheless deserve our attention: they offer us a rare window into the way artists lived, breathed and shaped the mythical Brussels Belle Époque.
The Father: Gustave Rion, the Silent Architect (1848–1893)
Gustave Rion was born in Paris in 1848. An architect, he married Louise Cador and the couple settled in Forest, then in the midst of rapid urban expansion on the outskirts of Brussels. It was there that their six children were born, including Lucien in 1875 and, some years later, Claire, the youngest.
Academic literature remains silent on Gustave Rion's architectural work. He died in 1893, aged just forty-five, leaving his children still in their teens. Lucien then enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, while his mother raised the siblings alone until her own death in 1927.
Lucien Rion (1875–1939): The Naturalist of Many Talents
From the Academy to his First Flight
Lucien Rion joined the Brussels Academy following his father's death, where he trained under Joseph Stallaert (1825–1903), a former Prix de Rome laureate and director of the institution. Before him, this celebrated master had seen major figures of Belgian art pass through his studio, including James Ensor and Jean Delville. Lucien would later move through this vibrant artistic world without, however, adopting either Ensor's proto-expressionist boldness or Delville's esoteric idealism.
The Idealist Paradox and the Le Sillon Experience
Although trained in a realist tradition, the young Lucien Rion made his first notable appearances by exhibiting at the Salon de l'Art Idéaliste of his elder Jean Delville (Symbolist movement) from January 1896. In 1898, he presented Le Chant du Cygne there. Maurice Sulzberger, writing in the Revue de Belgique, praised a painter capable of conveying with sincerity a "Virgilian melancholy."
It was only in the early twentieth century that Rion gravitated towards the artistic circle Le Sillon (founded in 1893 by former Academy students). This movement sought to reconnect with Flemish realism, under the watchful eye of the poet Émile Verhaeren. Among its influential members was the architect Paul Hankar, a leading figure of geometric Art Nouveau in Brussels. Within this stimulating environment, Rion exhibited his work in 1909 and 1911, alongside Léon Spilliaert and Rik Wouters. A complete artist, Rion painted, worked in metal, engraved wood illustrations for Maeterlinck's La Vie des Abeilles (1922), and produced lithographs for La Fontaine's Fables (1918).
The "Croûte-Club" and the Hôtel Cohn-Donnay
Drawn to the decorative arts, Rion formed a friendship with the architect Paul Hamesse (1877–1956) within the "Croûte-club," an informal society of bachelor artists. Hamesse was the direct heir of Paul Hankar, under whom he had trained.
His masterwork was the transformation, in 1904, of the private mansion belonging to the Cohn-Donnay couple, located at 316 rue Royale in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, the historic setting that today houses the brasserie De Ultieme Hallucinatie. Among the stained glass, woodwork and mosaics, four repoussé brass radiator covers bear the signature "L. Rion."
The Brussels Architectural Heritage Inventory attributes these pieces to Lucien Rion, a metalworker close to Hamesse. Yet a quiet rumour attributes them instead to a certain "Lucie" Rion, the "L." of the signature lending itself to confusion. There is no Lucie in the family; there is Lucien and his sister Clairette. Did the rumour distort his name, or did it take pleasure in inventing a feminine counterpart to Lucien? In the decorative arts of the period, family collaborations under a single name were common. In 1904, could Lucien have fashioned these pieces alone? The mystery remains complete. At the Ultieme Hallucinatie, we are fond of such stories: having for too long overlooked Marie Pleyel (to be explored in a forthcoming dedicated article), have we also unjustly erased a feminine contribution within the Rion family?
Who is Claire Rion?
Claire Amélie Jeanne, known as Clairette, was born in 1882. In 1908, she married Stuart Merrill, the celebrated American Symbolist poet writing in French.
Claire finds herself at the centre of another enigma. Olivier Delville reports that his father, Jean Delville, struck by the young woman's strange beauty, had depicted her with a mediumistic quality. This famous portrait, held at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, bears the date 1892. Yet in 1892, Claire Rion was only ten years old.
The mystery deepens: the sculptor René Harvent claims to have witnessed Delville executing this portrait in Mons much later, in the summer of 1944, as Allied bombers flew over the city. He advances precise material arguments, notably the use of mechanical Steinback-type paper, which did not exist before 1930. Daniel Guéguen lends credence to this theory in his work Jean Delville, la contre-histoire (2016). To this day, the Royal Museums have not responded publicly.
A Family in the Networks of the Belle Époque
The story of the Rions illustrates the way Art Nouveau in Brussels functioned as a web of close personal relationships. Hamesse and Lucien Rion crossed paths at the "Croûte-club." Lucien exhibited with Delville, himself a former student of Stallaert. Everything intersected within a radius of just a few streets. Claire, meanwhile, drew the family into international Symbolism through her marriage to Stuart Merrill, a regular at Mallarmé's famous Tuesday gatherings in Paris.
Lucien died unmarried in 1939 in Forest. Claire outlived her husband, who died in 1915, but her subsequent path remains an open question.
The Rion family embodies the unique permeability of the Belgian Belle Époque, bridging architecture, decorative ironwork and Symbolist poetry.
The Ultieme Hallucinatie preserves four of the finest concrete traces of this moment of artistic permeability.
The attribution remains open, the Rion mystery endures ,
but appreciating these remarkable works up close is as simple as ordering a signature cocktail or a dish at the Ultieme Hallucinatie…
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