Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp

In his twenties, Conscience worked as a translator in the Provincial House, which was then located in what is now the Bishop's Palace on the Schoenmarkt. “Later, from 1842 to 1854, he worked as a clerk in the Academy. His friend and mentor, the painter Gustaaf Wappers, was the director there,” says Johan Vanhecke.

In 1954, Conscience would resign, after Wappers had done the same a year earlier. “Their situation was no longer sustainable as they were constantly attacked by the then liberal French-speaking city council. Wappers moved to Paris. Conscience went to Kortrijk to become a district commissioner there.”

In Kortrijk, he wrote The Iron Grave in 1860. “A novel about a boy who studies to become a sculptor and falls in love with the daughter of the patron who pays for his studies. Part of that story takes place in this Academy. For Conscience, it was a way to process his nostalgia for Antwerp. Conscience was very much interested in art. In 1841, he had also written How to Become a Painter, a novel about Edward Dujardin, who would later illustrate almost all his novels.”

A year after Conscience started working at the Academy, he married Antwerp native Maria Peinen. They had five children. Two daughters, Machteld and Clara, died as toddlers. His sons Hildevert and Hendrik contracted typhus and died shortly after each other in 1869. They were 26 and 12 years old. Only his daughter Marie, born in 1846, survived her father and died in 1922.”

GVA - Gazet van Antwerpen