inside art nouveau

It is by no means certain that the engineer and architect Jules Brunfaut preferred Art Nouveau to other styles. Indeed, after training with Henri Beyaert, the father of national architecture, following a course at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris and taking study trips to Italy, he tended to favour the classical styles of the past. Being well-connected, he built several private mansions, châteaux and villas for high-society clients and also designed industrial buildings, notably for Solvay. In 1892, he married into a high-ranking noble Belgian family and left his profession in order to travel and to devote himself to his writings and activities for the illustrious Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium. Paradoxically, his most famous creation remains the only building he designed in the Art Nouveau style: the Hannon mansion.