We had the day off for Belgian National Day on Tuesday, and I went to Gent, to visit the Museum of Fine Arts (MSK) and the City Museum of Contemporary Art (SMAK), which face each other to the south of the city centre (where the Gentse Feesten were also on, but I didn’t check that out).
The Museum of Fine Arts probably isn’t in the top five art museums in Belgium (there are at least two better ones in each of Bruges, Brussels and Antwerp, never mind elsewhere), and it isn’t particularly large, but even a lesser Belgian art museum is on the level of a national gallery in many other countries. I had an enjoyable few hours looking around the collection. Here are my top ten art works, in chronological order.
Saint Jerome in Prayer, by Hieronymous Bosch (late 15th century). The saint has a very small pet lion, and the rocks and plants around him are typically twisted. Hieronymus depicts Hieronymus.
The Annunciation by Rubens (1620). Little angels throw flowers down onto the Blessed Virgin as the Angel of the Lord declares unto her and the Holy Spirit does its dove-like thing, interrupting her from her reading while the sewing still needs to be done, but not waking the cat.
The Fair Anthia Leading Her Companions to the Temple of Diana in Ephesus, by Joseph Paelink (1820). The opening scene of a well-known classical Greek novel, The Ephesian Tale of Anthia and Habrocomes by Xenophon of Ephesus. I am struck by the girls’ eyes. Anthia’s depiction is faithful to Xenophon’s description: “Her Golden Hair was partly bound up in Tresses, but the greatest Part thereof hung loose, and sported in the Wind. Her piercing Eyes carried Mirth, as a Maid; but darted Severity, as an Emblem of Chastity. Her Attire was a Purple Gown, hanging loose from her Waste to her Knees, the Skin of a Fawn girded it round, on which hung her Quiver and Arrows. She bore her hunting Arms, and Javelins, and her Hounds follow’d her.” (Rooke’s 1727 translation.)
The Cattle Stable by Jenny Montigny (1905). The MSK has a lot of art by women artists, I think much more so than most other museums that I have visited. I love the Luminist style, the sunlight glowing on the straw, and the exceptionally pissed off expression on the young woman’s face.
Portraits of Colette Versavel and Isaac Joseph De Meyer by Joseph François Ducq (1822). I always like these wedding portraits. He was born in 1786, she in 1799, so he’s in his mid thirties and she’s in her early twenties (they had married the obvious year, 1821). He had been a field doctor with the Napoleonic armies and at the time of his marriage was the surgeon-general to the United Netherlands Army, while it existed. She doesn’t look all that thrilled to be marrying him. Probably she is already pregnant and not enjoying it; they had five daughters and two sons, born between 1822 and 1836, but only two of the daughters and one of the sons survived to adulthood. That son, Desiré De Meyer, followed his father into the medical profession and lived to 1926, more than a century after his parents sat for these portraits.
The Bat, by Ferdinand de Braekeleer the Elder (1860). The dynamic is remarkable. You can’t actually see the bat (at least I can’t), but perhaps that’s the point.
The Master Painter, by Jan Frans Verhas (1877). Love the older kids watching the youngest of the group taking the first steps to making Great Art.
A Reading by Emile Verhaeren, by Theo Van Rysselberghe (1903). I love Van Rysselberghe’s art in general, and agonized over which of his paintings in Gent to choose for this post. He was a local lad, and the museum was actually designed by his brother. This is a gathering of his Belgian and French intellectual friends, listening to Émile Verhaeren (in the red jacket) reading from his latest work. They also include Maurice Maeterlinck (far left, hand on chin), Belgium’s only Nobel Prize winner for Literature, and Andre Gide (sitting down in the middle with a big moustache), who had a decades-long relationship with Van Rysselberghe’s daughter. The flowers and wallpaper show signs of pointillisme.
Venus Victorious, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Richard Guino (1914). Renoir is much better known for his paintings, but by 1914 he was badly disabled by arthritis and had to direct his Catalan assistant to create this. I think it’s tremendously dynamic. She holds the Apple of Discord in one hand and is considering putting on some clothes, or at least a drape, with the other.
The Strafing, by C. R. W. [Christopher Richard Wynne] Nevinson (1916). There’s a small section of the museum featuring War Art, and this, by one of the best known of the official British war artists, really jumped out at me.
There is a lot more there, and I found it tough to restrict myself to ten pieces. (Counting the De Meyer-Versavel marriage portraits as one.)
I have to say that the City Museum of Contemporary Art (SMAK) across the road was much less my thing. Apparently the permanent exhibition includes work by Warhol and Ponomarenko, but I did not spot either. A particularly pompous installation, Wirtschaftswerte by Joseph Beuys (1980), brings together a collection of East German consumer goods (yes, really) and invites us to reflect on their decay.
The only installation that I actually liked was Bow Echo by Aziz Hazara (2019) which features five simultaneous screens of five different little boys scrambling to the top of the same hill in Afghanistan on a windy day and then playing their kazoos. It seems a timely act of defiance. (I could only fit three of the screens in my viewfinder.)
Anyway the MSK was well worth the journey, and inspired me to get a book about Van Rysselberghe. As for the SMAK, well, take a look if you have the time and you like that sort of thing.