Hôtel Hankar: façade

Hankar’s first independent work was his own house in the Rue Defacqz, Brussels, a sober structure in brick with bluestone dressings and horizontal bands, decorated with wrought-iron work and a monochrome mural by the painter Adolphe Crespin (1859-1944). Unlike the flowing, more flamboyant style of Horta’s earliest private residences, Hankar’s house is a model of formal restraint, showing a Japanese influence that had been disseminated by his friend the Belgian writer Jules Destr�e’s Imagerie japonaise (1888).