Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium: One of Brussels’ Greatest Museums
Continuing with my series of photographs (finally!) from the most epic European dad-daughter trip of (probably?) our lifetime –
29 days from December 2023 to January 2024 via planes, trains and automobiles.
In this post, we stay in Brussels and being the art museum nerds that we are, pay a visit to the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, a prestigious collection of 20,000 works of art from the 15th to the 21st centuries.
Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium
The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (French: Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique; Dutch: Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België) is comprised of several entities (Royal Museums!): the Musée Old Masters Museum, the Musée Modern Museum, the Musée Wiertz Museum and the Musée Meunier Museum, the Musée Magritte Museum and the Musée Fin-de-Siècle Museum.
The museum was founded on September 1, 1801 by Napoleon Bonaparte and opened in 1803 as the Museum of Fine Arts of Brussels, occupying fourteen rooms of the former Palace of Charles of Lorraine and has expanded in subsequent years, benefitting from increases through purchases, donations or bequests.
One such expansion was the establishment of the Magritte Museum in 2009, which holds the world’s largest collection of the highly influential Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte (1898-1967), with more than 230 artworks. René Magritte’s cerebral, enigmatic paintings helped define the imagery and philosophy of the Surrealist movement, a cultural movement that began in Europe after World War I.
René Magritte described his paintings saying: “My painting is visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, ‘What does that mean?’ It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing, it is unknowable.”
A trio of works from Roger Ballen, an American photographer whose dark, eerie images of the South African social landscape have captured international attention.
“The Chalk Sellers” (1882) by Léon Frédéric, a Belgian Symbolist painter whose later works increasingly reflected social concerns.
“The Prayer” by Belgian sculptor Guillaume Charlier (1854-1925)
“The Man in Red” or “Portrait of the painter Paul Baignères” (1894) by French-born Belgian artist Henri Evenepoel
“La signora Adela Guerrero danseuse espagnole” (Spanish Dancer) (1851) by Gustave Courbet a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, Courbet occupies an important place in 19th-century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social statements through his work.
“The Bad Doctors” (1892″ by James Ensor, a Belgian painter whose worked served as an important influence on expressionism and surrealism
“Sunday Afternoon” (1914) by Belgian expressionist painter Van de Woestijne
(Top L-R) “The Nature” by Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939), a Czech painter, illustrator, and graphic artist and”Head of Medusa” by Belgian symbolist painter Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921)
I know that painting! “The Treasures of Satan (Les Trésors de Sathan)” (1895) by Jean Delville, a Belgian symbolist painter whose works generally deal with the theme of the duality between nature (human or otherwise) and the transcendental world. The painting was used by death metal outfit Morbid Angel as cover art on their landmark 1991 album “Blessed Are the Sick”
This curious looking character with bulging eggs for eyes and a shotgun nose by by British artist Gavin Turk (1967 – ) is taken from a Magritte painting ‘L’ellipse’. It’s called “Oscar”
“Les Menottes de cuivre (Copper Handcuffs)” (1931) by René Magritte portrays a reimagined version of the classical sculpture, Venus de Milo
(Top L-R) “An Old Woman Dozing” (circa 1656) by the Dutch painter Nicolaes Maes and “De keukenmeid” (1559) by Dutch painter Pieter Aertsen, credited with the invention of the monumental genre scene, which combines still life and genre painting
“Le Ruisseau (The Stream)” (1890-1899) part of a stunningly detailed triptych by Belgian painter Léon Frédéric
“Oh, what is my repentance ! Oh, a flute is not worth all that ! Despite his cries, his skin is torn off his whole body…” (Ovid: Metamorphoses, Book VI, verses 386-390). This is how Apollo punishes Marsyas, the satyr who dared to question the superiority of the melody of the divine lyre over the worldly sensuality of his flute.
“Apollo Flaying Marsyas” (1637) by Spanish painter Jusepe de Ribera, regarded as one of the major artists of Spanish Baroque painting.
“The Descent from the Cross” (1556) by Flemish Renaissance painter Jan Sanders van Hemessen
You think Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” is the only game in town? Flemish painter Aelbrecht Bouts (1455-1549) throws his hat into the ring with his own interpretation
“Portrait de jeune fille” (1894) by Belgian painter Émile Motte
“The Fall of the Rebel Angels” (1562) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder was among the most significant artists of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting
“De koning drinkt” (The King Drinks) is a 1640 oil painting on canvas by the Flemish Baroque artist Jacob Jordaens.
“Scène du Déluge” by Dutch Neoclassical sculptor Mathieu Kessels (1784–1836)
“Prometheus” by Flemish painter Theodoor Rombouts (1597–1637)
In Greek mythology, Prometheus is the god of fire and is best known for defying the Olympian gods by taking fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technology, knowledge and, more generally, civilization. His punishment for this? He was condemned by Zeus to eternal torment for his transgression. Prometheus was bound to a rock, and an eagle — the emblem of Zeus — was sent to eat his liver. His liver would then grow back overnight, only to be eaten again the next day in an ongoing cycle(!)
“The Pantry” (c. 1620) by Flemish painter Frans Snyders who was one of the earliest specialists of the realistic portrayal of animals
“Aeneas taken by the Sibyl to the Underworld” by the Dutch artist, Jacob Isaacszoon van Swanenburg (1571-1638)
“Sharpening the Saws” (1927) by Ukrainian painter Oleksandr Bohomazov, recognized as one of the key figures of the Ukrainian avant-garde scene
“The Invalids” (1924) by Soviet and Ukrainian painter Anatolii Petrytskyi
Miranda admiring “Episode of the Belgian Revolution of 1830”, a painting by Belgian artist Gustave Wappers (1803-1874) depicting a scene during the Belgian Revolution when the Declaration of Independence was read to the people of Brussels.
Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium is a truly wonderful art museum that you could spend several hours in. Adult tickets run €10 for the Old Masters or Magritte Museum and €15 to see it all (which we’d strongly recommend). Don’t miss it should you find yourself in Brussels…
