Léon Mignon

Léon Mignon (Liège, 9 April 1847 – Schaerbeek, 30 September 1898) was a Belgian sculptor working in a realist idiom, known for his depiction of bulls.

He won a gold medal at the Paris Salon for his sculpture Li Tore, the Bull-Tamer (illustration) which provoked polemics from critics for its combination of nudity with forthright realism.

A bronze on a similar theme, his Le Dompteur de Taureaux (1881), which had been noticed at the retrospective exhibition of Belgian sculpture the previous year (in its plaster model), and was championed by Gustave Rolin-Jaequemyns, Minister of the Interior, stands on the Terrasses d'Avroy, Liège.

Though a scarf had been added to the model to disguise the figure's nudity, the sculpture scandalised the editors of the Catholic daily, La Gazette de Liège.

His early Combat de taureaux dans la campagne romaine is conserved in the Musée Royal des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.