The Royal Museums of Fine Arts house the painting and sculpture collections of the Belgian state in Brussels. The museums include the Museum of Ancient Art and the Museum of Modern Art in the immediate vicinity of the Royal Palace, the neighboring houses of the Fin-de-Siècle Museum and the Magritte Museum, as well as the Antoine Wiertz Museum and the Constantin Meunier Museum in Ixelles.
Museum of Ancient Art
The collection of the Museum of Ancient Art comprises around 1200 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, several portraits and the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian by Hans Memling, the Virgin and Child and a triptych of the Brotherhood of St. Anne of Louvain by Quentin Massys and a Venus with Cupid as well as two portraits of donors by Jan Mabuse.
The museum owns entire groups of works by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens and Anthonis van Dyck.
Other Flemish paintings include An Outdoor Wedding by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, The Pantry and The Deer Hunt by Frans Snyders, Drinkers at the Table by Adriaen Brouwer, Flemish Fair, The Card Players and a Still Life by David Teniers the Younger.
Dutch painting is represented in the museum with a few high-quality pictures. These include a group of children and several 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.
Jacques-Louis David: The Death of Marat © Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium
Examples of French painting in the museum include Aeneas Hunting a Stag on the Coast of Libya by Claude Lorrain, Fountain and Colonnade in a Park by Hubert Robert and the Portrait of George Gougenot de Croissy by Jean-Baptiste Greuze. Other important works include 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 several artists of 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 by Lucas Cranach the Elder, the museum also owns the famous portrait of Dr. Scheyring, which was reproduced on the 1000 DM bill in Germany for many years.
Fin-de-Siècle Museum
Opened in 2013, the museum displays works of art from the period between 1868 and 1914, with a focus on Belgian artists. The collection includes sculptures by Constantin Meunier, which often depict workers and miners. The museum owns a Salomé by Alfred Stevens, the best-known 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 from 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 famous work The Tenderness of the Sphinx is on display at the museum.
Fernand Khnopff: The Tenderness of the Sphinx © Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium
Other works from the 19th century 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 from the turn of the century include the portrait of Suzanne Bambridge by Paul Gauguin, 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 is also The Marriage of Psyche by Edward Burne-Jones, Vincent van Gogh's depiction of a peasant from 1885 and a flower still life by Lovis Corinth.
Museum of Modern Art
Since its opening in 1984, the museum has exhibited works of art from the 19th century to the present day. Following the opening of the Magritte Museum in 2009, the Museum of Modern Art was closed. The former museum building has housed the newly created Fin-de-Siècle Museum since 2013. A separate building is planned for 20th and 21st century art. The Vanderborght building in the city center near the Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert is planned for this purpose. Until the opening of its own museum, a selection of modern art works can be seen in temporary exhibitions at the Museum of Ancient Art.
The museum's collection includes several works by the Surrealists. The museum owns Le couple, Pygmalion and Train du soir by Paul Delvaux, a railroad motif typical of the artist. These works are complemented by L'armée céleste by Max Ernst and one of the most popular paintings in this section, The Temptation of St. Anthony by Salvador Dalí.
Paintings by Pierre Alechinsky, Asger Jorn and Karel Appel from the CoBrA group of artists, of which Brussels was one of the centers, can be seen in the museum. The classical modernist paintings in the museum include the 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 as well as the sculpture Mirr by Hans Arp.
Works from the period after the Second World War include 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. The internationally oriented collection of contemporary art includes 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 Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers is particularly extensive.
Art museums
In addition to the Magritte Museum in the city center, which opened in 2009, there are two art museums in the Brussels district of Ixelles, 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 been part of the Royal Museums since 1978.
