Location: Rue de la Regence 3, Brussels
Tel. 02- 508 3211
Bus: 25, 27, 38, 60, 71, 95
Trolley: 92, 94
Subway:
Centrale, Parc
Open: 10am- 5pm Tue- Sun
Closed: public
holidays
Musees Royaux des Beaux Arts is a Royal Museum of Fine Arts that was formed in 1803 by uniting the old Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art located next to the Royal Palace of Brussels. Musees Royaux des Beaux Arts is situated in the downtown area on the Coudenberg. It contains a large collection of paintings and sculptures that belong to the state. Some of them date to the time of rule of Austrian kings. During Napoleonic Wars in the late 18th and early 19th century French revolutionary troops plundered Royal Museum of Fine Art in Brussels along with the whole region. They moved stolen goods to Paris. Only after defeat of the French Empire of Napoleon all confiscated masterpieces were returned to their homeland. Additionally kings William I and Leonid I purchased many art paintings to increase their magnificent museum. Royal Museum expanded considerably due to new works of Flemish, French and Italian painters. Much of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts is reserved for paintings of the Belgian masters dating to 14th- 18th centuries. Numerous halls of the Museum is designated in numbers and letters for easy way to find yourself around this large building. Today it contains over 20,000 works of art: paintings, sculptures and etc.
The Museum of Fine Arts opened its doors in 1803. Where Brussels art
lovers used to look to their liking in churches and private collections,
they could now visit a public museum that occupies fourteen rooms of the
Oude Hof. It was Charles de la Serna Santander, director of the École
Centrale, founded in 1797, who had conceived the plan to build a museum
around the approximately 1500 works in the depots, originating from
closed monasteries. Guillaume Bosschaert had selected about a hundred
pieces for the collection and on October 13, 1798, was officially
appointed curator of the museum of the École Centrale, which, however,
had limited access. Thanks to the Chapter Decree, Brussels was promised
a regional museum in 1801, and the following year even a few works that
had been removed from the Louvre, including four Rubens, were returned.
A second shipment of 31 paintings followed in 1811, the year in which
the city of Brussels became owner of the museum. Four years later, Louis
XVIII even restored a hundred or so discarded masterpieces. King Willem
I of the Netherlands sponsored an expansion of the collection and had
two wings added to the current Museumplein (the so-called Palace of
National Industry, opened in 1830).
After Belgian independence,
the concept of a national museum was developed in 1835. By an agreement
dated December 31, 1842, the state took ownership of the city. Three
years later, the Musée Royal de Peinture et de Sculpture acquired a
contemporary art department. From 1862 to 1877, that department
temporarily moved to the Academy Palace. The works of the old masters
moved from the Oude Hof to Regentschapsstraat in 1887, giving a new
destination to Alphonse Balat's Palace of Fine Arts, which opened in
1880. Modern art remained in the Oude Hof until 1962, ended up in a
cramped housing on the Koningsplein until 1978, and then from 1984 found
a connection with the old art in an underground complex with a light
well, designed by Roger Bastin.
From 2004, the museum embarked on
a restructuring program, with the aim of making the collections more
accessible and reaching a wider audience. Curator Michel Draguet wanted
to bring together different collections from federal institutions and to
set up specific museums that better highlight a certain sub-collection.
In 2009, the Magritte Museum was founded. In 2013, the Fin-de-Siècle
Museum opened in the underground rooms, where since 1984 the museum of
modern art was located.
Museum of Ancient Art
The collection of the Museum of Ancient Art
includes around 1,200 works of European art from the 14th to the 18th
century. The focus is on Flemish painting, with almost all artists
represented with important works. The most important paintings include
The Annunciation by Robert Campin, a Pietà and two portraits by Rogier
van der Weyden, several religious depictions by Dierick Bouts, Petrus
Christus and Hugo van der Goes, some portraits and the Martyrdom of St
Sebastian by Hans Memling, the Virgin with Child and a triptych of the
Brotherhood of St. Anne of Lions by Quentin Massys and a Venus with
Cupid and two donor portraits by Jan Mabuse.
The museum owns
entire groups of works by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Peter Paul Rubens,
Jacob Jordaens and Anthonis van Dyck. You can see from Brueghel:
The Fall of the Resisting Angels, The Adoration of the Magi, Winter
Landscape with Skaters and a Bird Trap, The Bethlehem Census, Landscape
with the Fall of Icarus and the Yawners.
The museum shows works by
Rubens including:
Christ and the adulteress, negro heads, the
adoration of the wise men, the carrying of the cross, the ascension
(former monastery of the Discalced Carmelites), the martyrdom of St.
Livinius, the martyrdom of St. Ursula, landscape with Atalantes hunting,
portrait of Peter Pecquius, The Miracles of St. Benedict, The Fall of
Icarus, The Fall of the Titans and a Coronation of Mary.
The pictures
by Jacob Jordaens are in the museum:
Homage to Pomona, Saint
Martin heals a possessed man, to see Susanna with the old men, Pan and
Syrinx and Satyr and Peasant.
The paintings by Anthony van Dyck in
the museum include:
Portrait of Jean-Charles della Faille,
Portrait of Franz Duquesnoy, Portrait of a Genoese Lady and her
Daughter, Rinaldo and Armida and a Crucifixion of Christ.
Other
paintings of Flemish painting include An Outdoor Wedding by Pieter
Brueghel the Younger, The Pantry and The Stag Hunt by Frans Snyders,
Drinkers at the Table by Adriaen Brouwer, Flemish Funfair, The Card
Players and a Still Life by David Teniers the Younger.
Dutch
painting is represented in the museum with a few, but high-quality
pictures. These include a group of children and some portraits by Frans
Hals, the Portrait of Nicolaas van Bambeeck by Rembrandt, The Common
Glass by Pieter de Hooch, The Meal by Gabriel Metsu and a view of the
Haarlemersee by Jacob Izaaksoon van Ruisdael.
Examples of French
paintings in the museum are Aeneas Hunting Deer on the Coast of Libya by
Claude Lorrain, Fountain and Portico in a Park by Hubert Robert and
Portrait of George Gougenot de Croissy by Jean-Baptiste Greuze. Other
important works are The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David and
Auguste écoutant la lecture de l'Enéide by Jean-Auguste-Dominique
Ingres.
Italian painting is represented in the museum by some
artists from the Venetian school. These include a Virgin and Child and
St. Francis by Carlo Crivelli, The Martyrdom of St. Mark by Jacopo
Tintoretto, The Divine Virtues by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and a veduta
by Francesco Guardi.
In addition to Adam and Eve and Venus and
Cupid, the museum also owns the well-known portrait of Dr. Scheyring,
which was reproduced on the 1000 DM note in Germany for many years.
The museum, which opened in 2013, shows works of art from the period
1868 to 1914, with a focus on Belgian artists. The collection includes
sculptures by Constantin Meunier, often depicting workers and miners.
The museum owns a Salomé by Alfred Stevens, the most famous
representative of Belgian Impressionism, while Guillaume Vogels is
represented with La neige, soir and Emile Claus with La récolte du lin
and Les asters. There are also important artists of the turn of the
century such as Henry van de Velde with Faits du village. VII. La fille
qui remaille, Théo van Rysselberghe with La promenade, James Ensor with
La musique russe and Fernand Khnopff, whose well-known work The
Tenderness of the Sphinx is on display in the museum.
Other
19th-century works include a Paysage à Ornans by Gustave Courbet and a
Portrait de Mlles Louise Riesener et Eva Callimaki-Catargi by Henri
Fantin-Latour. Works by French artists of the turn of the century
include Paul Gauguin's Portrait of Suzanne Bambridge, The Seine at the
Grand Jatte, Spring by Georges Seurat, La calanque by Paul Signac, Les
deux écoliers by Édouard Vuillard, a landscape by Maurice de Vlaminck
and Auguste Rodin's sculpture Cariatide tombée portant sa pierre. There
are also The Marriage of Psyche by Edward Burne-Jones, Vincent van
Gogh's 1885 depiction of a peasant and a floral still life by Lovis
Corinth.
Since opening in 1984, the museum has displayed works of art from the
19th century to the present day. After the opening of the Magritte
Museum in 2009, the Museum of Modern Art was closed. The newly created
Fin-de-Siècle Museum has been housed in the former museum building since
2013. A separate building is planned for art from the 20th and 21st
centuries. The Vanderborght building in the city center near the
Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert is intended for this purpose. A selection
of modern works of art can be seen in temporary exhibitions in the
Museum of Ancient Art until the museum opens its own building.
The museum's collection includes several works by the Surrealists. The
museum has Le couple, Pygmalion and the Train du soir by Paul Delvaux, a
railway motif typical of the artist. This work is complemented by
L'armée céleste by Max Ernst and one of the most popular paintings in
this department, The Temptation of Saint Anthony by Salvador Dalí.
From the artists' group CoBrA, one of whose centers was Brussels,
paintings by painters Pierre Alechinsky, Asger Jorn and Karel Appel can
be seen in the museum. The classical modern paintings in the museum
include Portrait of Ernst Reinhold by Oskar Kokoschka, Two Children by
Otto Dix, A View of Marseille by Raoul Dufy, Danseuse espagnole by Joan
Miró, Les raisins by Georges Braque, Guitare et compotier by Pablo
Picasso , Clair de lune, Moi et le village and Moi, Marc Chagall by Marc
Chagall, L'éclipse by Francis Picabia and a flower garden by Emil Nolde
and the sculpture Mirr by Hans Arp.
The works Le burg dévasté by
Jean Dubuffet, Le pape aux hiboux by Francis Bacon, Homage to the Square
by Josef Albers and sculptures by Henri Laurens, Rik Wouters and a
mobile by Alexander Calder date from the period after the Second World
War. The international contemporary art collection features works by
Dado, Jannis Kounellis, Donald Judd, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Sol LeWitt,
Francis Bacon, Dan Flavin, Panamarenko and Thomas Ruff. The group of
works by the Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers is particularly
extensive.
In addition to the Magritte Museum in the city center, which opened in 2009, there are two artist museums in the Ixelles district of Brussels, which are also part of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts. The Antoine Wiertz Museum has been open to the public since 1868, while the Constantin Meunier Museum has only belonged to the Royal Museums since 1978.