Short answers, pulled from the story.
Constantin Meunier was born in the working-class district of Etterbeek on the 12th of April 1831. His family lived in poverty following the Belgian Revolution which had occurred just one year before his birth.
Constantin Meunier abandoned sculpting for thirty years to pursue painting after encountering Gustave Courbet's painting The Stone Breakers in 1851. That single image caused him to doubt whether sculpture could adequately represent contemporary social issues.
Constantin Meunier resumed sculpting in 1885 with his first major work called The Puddler. He followed this with The Hammerman in 1886, Firedamp in 1889, and Le Débardeur modeled in 1885.
The Constantin Meunier Museum occupies the last house where he lived and worked in Ixelles, Brussels. Today about 150 of his works are displayed there including pieces from his collection at M - Museum Leuven and Brussels' Fin-de-Siècle Museum.
Louis Jehotte taught Constantin Meunier from 1848 until 1852 while Charles-Auguste Fraikin ran a private studio where Meunier studied starting in 1852. He began studying sculpture at age fourteen at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels in September 1845.