Art of Belgium

Despite its size, Belgium has a long and distinguished artistic tradition that goes back to the Middle Ages, considerably pre-dating the foundation of the current state in 1830.

Art from the areas making up modern Belgium is called in English Netherlandish up to the separation with the Netherlands from 1570 on, and Flemish until the 18th century.

Flanders became one of the richest areas in Europe in the later Middle Ages and Early Netherlandish painting produced work for both the wealthy townspeople as well as the courtiers of the Duke of Burgundy.

Flemish Baroque painting is dominated by the figure of Rubens, though like his pupil Anthony van Dyck, he spent much of his career abroad.

During the so-called Northern Renaissance, Belgium experienced an artistic boom, spawning the immensely popular Baroque Flemish school of painting.

Many Flemish and Walloon painters studied in Paris and adopted the new neoclassical style en vogue in the last decades of the 18th century.

Their major followers in Belgium (then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands) where Joseph Denis Odevaere and François-Joseph Navez.

Constantin Meunier was an influential Belgian sculptor of the late 19th-early 20th century, known for his figures, which unusually, often depict industrial workers.

George Grard (1901 — 1984) was a Walloon sculptor, known above all for his representations of the female, in the manner of Pierre Renoir and Aristide Maillol, modelled in clay or plaster, and cast in bronze.

The style enjoyed great popularity in Belgium and several neoclassical masterpieces, including Gembloux Abbey and the Château de Seneffe survive.

Numerous houses around Belgium in the Art Nouveau style designed by Victor Horta survive (though not his masterpiece, the Maison du Peuple) which are classified as by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.