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Belgium
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Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a sovereign state in Western Europe bordered by France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and the North Sea. It is a small, densely populated country which covers an area of 30,528 square kilometres and has a population of about 11 million people. Additionally, there is a group of German-speakers who live in the East Cantons located around the High Fens area. Historically, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were known as the Low Countries, the region was called Belgica in Latin, after the Roman province of Gallia Belgica. From the end of the Middle Ages until the 17th century, today, Belgium is a federal constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. It is divided into three regions and three communities, that exist next to each other and its two largest regions are the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in the north and the French-speaking southern region of Wallonia. The Brussels-Capital Region is a bilingual enclave within the Flemish Region. A German-speaking Community exists in eastern Wallonia, Belgiums linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in its political history and complex system of governance, made up of six different governments. Upon its independence, declared in 1830, Belgium participated in the Industrial Revolution and, during the course of the 20th century, possessed a number of colonies in Africa. This continuing antagonism has led to several far-reaching reforms, resulting in a transition from a unitary to a federal arrangement during the period from 1970 to 1993. Belgium is also a member of the Eurozone, NATO, OECD and WTO. Its capital, Brussels, hosts several of the EUs official seats as well as the headquarters of major international organizations such as NATO. Belgium is also a part of the Schengen Area, Belgium is a developed country, with an advanced high-income economy and is categorized as very high in the Human Development Index. A gradual immigration by Germanic Frankish tribes during the 5th century brought the area under the rule of the Merovingian kings, a gradual shift of power during the 8th century led the kingdom of the Franks to evolve into the Carolingian Empire. Many of these fiefdoms were united in the Burgundian Netherlands of the 14th and 15th centuries, the Eighty Years War divided the Low Countries into the northern United Provinces and the Southern Netherlands. The latter were ruled successively by the Spanish and the Austrian Habsburgs and this was the theatre of most Franco-Spanish and Franco-Austrian wars during the 17th and 18th centuries. The reunification of the Low Countries as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands occurred at the dissolution of the First French Empire in 1815, although the franchise was initially restricted, universal suffrage for men was introduced after the general strike of 1893 and for women in 1949. The main political parties of the 19th century were the Catholic Party, French was originally the single official language adopted by the nobility and the bourgeoisie
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Art museum
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An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art. Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection, the term is used for both public galleries, which are non-profit or publicly owned museums that display selected collections of art. On the other hand, private galleries refers to the commercial enterprises for the sale of art, however, both types of gallery may host traveling exhibits or temporary exhibitions including art borrowed from elsewhere. In broad terms, in North American usage, the word gallery alone often implies a private gallery, the term contemporary art gallery refers usually to a privately owned for-profit commercial gallery. These galleries are found clustered together in large urban centers. Smaller cities are home to at least one gallery, but they may also be found in towns or villages. Contemporary art galleries are open to the general public without charge, however. They usually profit by taking a portion of art sales, from 25% to 50% is typical, there are also many non-profit or collective galleries. Some galleries in cities like Tokyo charge the artists a flat rate per day, curators often create group shows that say something about a certain theme, trend in art, or group of associated artists. Galleries sometimes choose to represent artists exclusively, giving them the opportunity to show regularly, a gallerys definition can also include the artist cooperative or artist-run space, which often operates as a space with a more democratic mission and selection process. A vanity gallery is an art gallery that charges fees from artists in order to show their work, the shows are not legitimately curated and will frequently or usually include as many artists as possible. Most art professionals are able to identify them on an artists resume, University art museums and galleries constitute collections of art that are developed, owned, and maintained by all kinds of schools, community colleges, colleges, and universities. This phenomenon exists in both the West and East, making it a global practice, although largely overlooked, there are over 700 university art museums in America alone. This number, in comparison to other kinds of art museums, throughout history, large and expensive works of art have generally been commissioned by religious institutions and monarchs and been displayed in temples, churches, and palaces. Although these collections of art were private, they were made available for viewing for a portion of the public. In classical times, religious institutions began to function as a form of art gallery. Wealthy Roman collectors of engraved gems and other precious objects often donated their collections to temples and it is unclear how easy it was in practice for the public to view these items. At the Palace of Versailles, entrance was restricted to wearing the proper apparel – the appropriate accessories could be hired from shops outside
3.
Guillaume Geefs
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Guillaume Geefs, also Willem Geefs, was a Belgian sculptor. Although known primarily for his works and public portraits of statesmen and nationalist figures, he also explored mythological subject matter. Geefs was born at Antwerp, the eldest of six brothers in a family of sculptors, Guillaume first studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp under the late–Flemish Baroque sculptor Jan Frans van Geel and his son, Jan Lodewijk van Geel, who was also a sculptor. He completed his training under Jean-Etienne Ramey at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, in 1829, Geefs traveled to Italy. When he returned to Antwerp, he began teaching at the art academy, during the 1830s, he executed the colossal work Victims of the Revolution at Brussels, as well as numerous statues and busts. In 1836, he married Isabelle Marie Françoise Corr, a Brussels-born painter of Irish descent known professionally as Fanny Geefs, in the mid-19th century, the sculptor Guillaume-Joseph Charlier was an assistant to him and his brother Joseph. Geefs early work has characterized as predominately elegiac in mood. By the end of the 1830s, however, he developed a powerful, spare realism in monumental works such as General Belliard and Frédéric de Mérode and he was prolific in producing tombs, pulpits, statues, busts, and sculpture groups. The works of Guillaume Geefs include, Frédéric de Mérode, tomb monument, noted for its naturalness, le lion amoreux or The Amorous Lion, marble, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, see online, small bronze version online. In his lifetime, Geefs work was considered by some to be marred by frivolous and inessential details and poverty of thought and he is now regarded as the dominant Belgian sculptor of his time. Le génie du mal Two statues by Guillaume Geefs Bio on Philatelia. net
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City of Brussels
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The City of Brussels is the largest municipality of the Brussels-Capital Region, and the de jure capital of Belgium. The City of Brussels covers most of the Regions centre, as well as northern outskirts where it borders municipalities in Flanders and it is the administrative centre of the European Union. On 1 January 2016, the City of Brussels had a population of 178,552. The total area is 32.61 km2 which gives a density of 5,475 inhabitants per square kilometre. As of 2007, there were approximately 50,000 registered non-Belgians in the City of Brussels, at first, the City of Brussels was simply defined, being the area within the second walls of Brussels, the modern-day small ring. As the city grew, the villages grew as well, eventually growing into a contiguous city. The construction of Avenue Louise was commissioned in 1847 as an avenue bordered by chestnut trees that would allow easy access to the popular recreational area of the Bois de la Cambre. However, fierce resistance to the project was put up by the town of Ixelles through whose land the avenue was supposed to run. After years of negotiations, Brussels finally annexed the narrow band of land needed for the avenue plus the Bois de la Cambre itself in 1864. That decision accounts for the unusual southeastern protrusion of the City of Brussels, the Université Libre de Bruxelles Solbosch campus is also part of the City of Brussels, partially accounting for the bulge in the southeast end. Unlike most of the municipalities in Belgium, the ones located in the Brussels-Capital Region were not merged with others during mergers occurring in 1964,1970, however, a few neighbouring municipalities have been merged into the City of Brussels, including Haren, Laken and Neder-Over-Heembeek in 1921. These comprise the northern bulge in the municipality, to the south-east is also a strip of land along Avenue Louise that was annexed from the Ixelles municipality
5.
Coudenberg
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Coudenberg or Koudenberg is a small hill in Brussels where the Palace of Coudenberg was built. After several years of recent excavations, the vestiges of the palace. In about 1100, the counts of Leuven and Brussels left the bottom of the valley of the Zenne and built their castle on the heights of Coudenberg from where they could dominate the small city. With the creation of the Duchy of Brabant in 1183 by the German Emperor Frederik Barbarossa, the hunting park of the dukes led down the hill to the north, a remnant of which is now Brussels Park. The first regular meetings of the States-General, composed of delegates from the class, clergy. It was in this room that in 1515 Margaret of Austria formally relinquished her regency over the Low Countries to Charles von Habsburg, and it was in this same room that 40 years later Charles V abdicated in favour of his son, King Philip II of Spain. In the 17th century, under their reign as the sovereigns of the Spanish Netherlands, the archdukes restored the façade of the palace, transformed the buildings and refitted the apartments and gardens. As art lovers, the archdukes brought to their court the best artists of the time, Jan Brueghel and Rubens among them, on the night of February 3,1731, fire broke out in the kitchens and quickly engulfed the entire palace. The freezing conditions made it difficult to deliver any water and the means of firefighting were very insufficient, in the morning, the palace was in ruins with many of the works of art destroyed along with the governmental archives. Unfortunately money was not available for rebuilding, so for more than 40 years and it was only in 1774 that Charles Alexander of Lorraine proposed replacing the ruins with a Royal Square. Because of the clash between the Gothic chapel and the surrounding buildings, the chapel was pulled down. Just off the southwest corner of Brussels Park, lies the Royal Square which was atop the ruins of the old Palace. Originally a statue of Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine, the governor of Austrian Netherlands. The statue was not equestrian, but showed Charles-Alexander standing, attending to the affairs of government, unfortunately, following the French Revolution and during the occupation of Brussels by the French, it was melted down for the value of the metal. The current equestrian statue is of a young Godfrey of Bouillon, a new statue of Charles-Alexander of Lorraine was eventually placed nearby in the Museum Square. The Royal Square on the Coudenberg is faced by the church of St. Jacob-on-the-Coudenberg and it was built by two French architects, Montoyer and Guimard, in classic style from 1776 to 1780. In the 19th century the dome and two wings were added. The remains of the ancient palace and adjacent building have been excavated below present ground level
6.
Constantin Meunier
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Constantin Meunier was a Belgian painter and sculptor. He made an important contribution to the development of art by elevating the image of the industrial worker, docker and miner to an icon of modernity. His work is a reflection of the industrial, social and political developments of his day and represents a compassionate and committed view of man, constantin Meunier was born in the traditionally working-class area of Etterbeek in Brussels. He was encouraged to pursue a career by his elder brother. He entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels in September 1845 and he studied under the sculptor Louis Jehotte from 1848. He also attended from 1852 the private studio of the sculptor Charles-Auguste Fraikin and his first exhibit was a plaster sketch, The Garland, shown at the Brussels Salon in 1851. Soon afterwards, on the advice of the painter Charles de Groux, on his return to Belgium he was appointed professor at the Louvain Academy of Fine Arts. He was one of the co-founders of the Société Libre des Beaux-Arts of Brussels and was a member of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers and he was a freemason, and a member of the lodge Les Amis Philanthropes of the Grand Orient of Belgium in Brussels. Meunier died in Brussels on 4 April 1905, paintings Sculptures In 1939, the Musée Constantin-Meunier dedicated to his work was opened in the last house in which Meunier lived and worked, in Ixelles, Brussels. Today about 150 of his works are displayed there, M - Museum Leuven also holds a number of important works by Meunier. Saemann This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh. P. & V. Berko, Dictionary of Belgian painters born between 1750 &1875, Knokke 1981, pp. 466–467
7.
Antoine Wiertz
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Antoine Joseph Wiertz was a Belgian romantic painter and sculptor. Born in Dinant from a poor family, he entered the Antwerp art academy in 1820. Thanks to his protector Pierre-Joseph de Paul de Maibe, a member of the Second Chamber of the States-General, between November 1829 and May 1832, he stayed in Paris, where he studied the old masters at the Louvre. Upon his return, he established himself in Liège with his mother, during his stay in Rome, Wiertz worked on his first great work, Les Grecs et les Troyens se disputant le corps de Patrocle, on a subject borrowed from book XVII of Homers Iliad. It was exhibited in Antwerp in 1837, where it met some success. Wiertz submitted the work for the Paris Salon of 1838, badly hung and lit, his entry elicited indifference on the part of the public, and provoked sarcasm among the critics. This second humiliation led to a profound rancour against art critics and against Paris, as expressed in his virulent pamphlet Bruxelles capitale, in 1844, Wiertz painted a second version of his Patrocles on an even bigger scale than the first. The Rome version is now in the Museum of Walloon Art in Liège, after the Paris disaster, Wiertz veered more and more to the excessive. A fine example is the monumental La Chute des Anges rebelles, the death of his mother in 1844 was a terrible blow to the artist. He left Liège in 1845 to settle in Brussels for good, during this period he painted a confrontation of Beauty and Death, Deux jeunes filles—La Belle Rosine, which remains perhaps his most famous work. Dissatisfied with the effect of oil painting, he developed a new technique combining the smoothness of oil painting with the speed of execution. This technique of mat painting entailed the use of a mixture of colours, turpentine, La Lutte homérique was the first big-scale painting executed in this technique. However, the used in this technique are responsible for the slow decay of the works produced with it. Wiertz was also a portrait painter, who made self-portraits at various ages. Influenced mainly by Rubens and the late Michelangelo, Wiertz monumental painting often moves between classical academism and lurid romanticism, between the grandiose and the ridiculous. After difficult negotiations with the Belgian government, Wiertz was able to realize his dream to turn his last studio into a museum for his works, the Belgian State bought a piece of land and funded the construction of a huge hall to accommodate the painters monumental works. In exchange, Wiertz donated all his works to the Belgian State and his remains were embalmed in accordance with Ancient Egyptian burial rites and buried in a vault in the municipal cemetery of Ixelles. A copy of one of Antoine Wiertzs works, the statue of The Triumph of Light was once prominently located high on San Franciscos Mount Olympus between the Haight-Ashbury and Corona Heights and it had been presented to the city of San Francisco by Adolph Sutro in 1887
8.
Jacob Jordaens
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Jacob Jordaens was a Flemish painter, draughtsman and tapestry designer known for his history paintings, genre scenes and portraits. After Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, he was the leading Flemish Baroque painter of his day, unlike those contemporaries he never travelled abroad to study Italian painting, and his career is marked by an indifference to their intellectual and courtly aspirations. In fact, except for a few trips to locations in the Low Countries. As well as being a painter, he was a prominent designer of tapestries. Jordaens main artistic influences, besides Rubens and the Brueghel family, were northern Italian painters such as Jacopo Bassano, Paolo Veronese, and Caravaggio. Jacob Jordaens was born on 19 May 1593, the first of eleven children, to the wealthy linen merchant Jacob Jordaens Sr. little is known about Jordaens early education. It can be assumed that he received the advantages of the education provided for children of his social class. This assumption is supported by his handwriting, his competence in French. Like Rubens, he studied under Adam van Noort, who was his only teacher, during this time Jordaens lived in Van Noorts house in the Everdijstraat and became very close to the rest of the family. After eight years of training with Van Noort, he enrolled in the Guild of St. Luke as a waterschilder and this medium was often used for preparing tapestry cartoons in the seventeenth century. Although examples of his earliest watercolour works are no longer extant, in the same year as his entry into the guild,1616, he married his teachers eldest daughter, Anna Catharina van Noort, with whom he had three children. In 1618, Jordaens bought a house in Hoogstraat and he would then later buy the adjoining house to expand his household and workspace in 1639, mimicking Rubens house built two decades earlier. He lived and worked here until his death in 1678, Jordaens never made the traditional trip to Italy to study classical and Renaissance art. Despite this, he made efforts to study prints or works of Italian masters available in northern Europe. For example, Jordaens is known to have studied Titian, Veronese, Caravaggio and his commissions frequently came from wealthy local Flemish patrons and clergy, although later in his career he worked for courts and governments across Europe. Besides a large output of oil paintings he was a prolific tapestry designer. Jordaens importance can also be seen by his number of pupils, among them were his cousin and his son Jacob. Like Rubens and other artists at that time, Jordaens studio relied on his assistants, not many of these pupils went on to fame themselves, however a position in Jordaens studio was highly desirable for young artists from across Europe
9.
Early Netherlandish painting
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Their work follows the International Gothic style and begins approximately with Robert Campin and Jan van Eyck in the early 1420s. It lasts at least until the death of Gerard David in 1523, the major Netherlandish painters include Campin, van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Dieric Bouts, Petrus Christus, Hans Memling, Hugo van der Goes and Hieronymus Bosch. These artists made significant advances in natural representation and illusionism, and their subjects are usually religious scenes or small portraits, with narrative painting or mythological subjects being relatively rare. Landscape is often richly described but relegated as a background detail before the early 16th century, the painted works are generally oil on panel, either as single works or more complex portable or fixed altarpieces in the form of diptychs, triptychs or polyptychs. The period is noted for its sculpture, tapestries, illuminated manuscripts, stained glass. Assisted by the system, panels and a variety of crafts were sold to foreign princes or merchants through private engagement or market stalls. A majority were destroyed during waves of iconoclasm in the 16th and 17th centuries, Early northern art in general was not well regarded from the early 17th to the mid-19th century, and the painters and their works were not well documented until the mid-19th century. Art historians spent almost another century determining attributions, studying iconography, attribution of some of the most significant works is still debated. These artists became a driving force behind the Northern Renaissance. In this political and art-historical context, the north follows the Burgundian lands which straddled areas that encompass parts of modern France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlandish artists have been known by a variety of terms. Late Gothic is a designation which emphasises continuity with the art of the Middle Ages. In the early 20th century, the artists were variously referred to in English as the Ghent-Bruges school or the Old Netherlandish school. In this context, primitive does not refer to a lack of sophistication. When the Burgundian dukes established centres of power in the Netherlands, in the 19th century the Early Netherlandish artists were classified by nationality, with Jan van Eyck identified as German and van der Weyden as French. Scholars were at times preoccupied as to whether the schools genesis was in France or Germany, in the 14th century, as Gothic art gave way to the International Gothic era, a number of schools developed in northern Europe. Early Netherlandish art originated in French courtly art, and is tied to the tradition. Modern art historians see the era as beginning with 14th-century manuscript illuminators and this patronage continued in the low countries with the Burgundian dukes, Philip the Good and his son Charles the Bold. The demand for illuminated manuscripts declined towards the end of the century, following van Eycks innovations, the first generation of Netherlandish painters emphasised light and shadow, elements usually absent from 14th-century illuminated manuscripts
10.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
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He also painted no portraits, the other mainstay of Netherlandish art. After his training and travels to Italy, he returned in 1555 to settle in Antwerp and he does the same with the fantastic and anarchic world developed in Renaissance prints and book illustrations. He is sometimes referred to as Peasant Bruegel, to him from the many later painters in his family. From 1559, he dropped the h from his name and signed his paintings as Bruegel, the two main early sources for Bruegels biography are Lodovico Guicciardinis account of the Low Countries and Karel van Manders 1604 Schilder-boeck. Guicciardini recorded that Bruegel was born in Breda, but van Mander specified that Bruegel was born in a village near Breda called Brueghel, nothing at all is known of his family background. Van Mander seems to assume he came from a peasant background, in keeping with the over-emphasis on Bruegels peasant genre scenes given by van Mander and many art historians. Breda was already a significant centre as the base of the House of Orange-Nassau, with a population of some 8,000, from the fact that Bruegel entered the Antwerp painters guild in 1551, it is inferred that he was born between 1525 and 1530. His master, according to van Mander, was the Antwerp painter Pieter Coecke van Aelst, between 1545 and 1550 he was a pupil of Pieter Coecke, who died on 6 December 1550. Bruegel possibly got this work via the connections of Mayken Verhulst, maykens father and eight siblings were all artists or married an artist, and lived in Mechelen. In 1551 Bruegel became a master in the Guild of Saint Luke of Antwerp. He set off for Italy soon after, probably by way of France. He visited Rome and, rather adventurously for the period, by 1552 he had reached Reggio Calabria at the tip of the mainland. He probably continued to Sicily, but by 1553 was back in Rome, there he met the miniaturist Giulio Clovio, whose will of 1578 lists paintings by Bruegel, in one case a joint work. These works, apparently landscapes, have not survived, but marginal miniatures in manuscripts by Clovio are attributed to Bruegel, with one exception, Bruegel did not work the plates himself, but produced a drawing which Cocks specialists worked from. In 1563 he was married in Brussels, where he lived for the rest of his life, while Antwerp was the capital of Netherlandish commerce as well as the art market, Brussels was the centre of government. Van Mander tells a story that his mother-in-law pushed for the move to him from his established servant girl mistress. By now painting had become his main activity, and his most famous come from these years. His paintings were sought after, with patrons including wealthy Flemish collectors and Cardinal Granvelle, in effect the Habsburg chief minister
