Brussels Salon

Under the impetus of Charles-Joseph, 4th Duke d'Ursel, and the Ghent bibliophile Charles van Hulthem, the Société de Bruxelles pour l'encouragement des beaux-arts ("Brussels Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts") was founded.

The new Grand Gallery had just opened and had received, among other works, The Sacrifice of Mayor Pieter van der Werff by Gustave Wappers.

[4] However, the work was a great success with the crowds, as its exhibition was held just before the Belgian Revolution broke out in September 1830, and the organising association decided to withdraw in view of the context of unrest in the kingdom.

[5] The government of the newly independent Belgium saw an opportunity to take the organisation into its own hands and gave a more national interpretation to the concept.

From the next edition in 1833, the Salon was known as the Exposition nationale des Beaux-Arts ("National Exhibition of Fine Arts").

While such exhibitions existed in many Belgian cities, those of Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent were the only ones to claim a national character and were part of a triennial system that ensured their periodicity.

Its members included the future writer Charles de Coster and the young artist Félicien Rops, who published Le Diable au Salon (1851) at the age of eighteen.

An effort was made to attract foreign artists, and to emphasize this, the Salon was henceforth called the Exposition générale des Beaux-Arts ("General Exhibition of Fine Arts").

A new Société des Beaux-Arts (de Bruxelles) ("Society of Fine Arts (of Brussels)") was entrusted with the organisation, albeit still under government control.