The Land of Rubens. A companion for visitors to Belgium ... Translated from the Dutch ... by A. D. Vandam

Front matter

GREAT EASTERN RAILWAY. THE HARWICH ROUTE TO GREAT EASTERN RAILWAY. THE CONTINENT Via HARWICH, DAILY (Sundays Excepted) The BOAT EXPRESSES leave London (Liverpool Street Station) at 8 p.m. and Doncaster at 4.48 p.m., in connection with EXPRESS TRAINS from Liverpool, Manchester, and the North of England and Scotland, running alongside the Company's Steamers at Parkeston Quay (Harwich), which leave every Week-day for ANTWERP and ROTTERDAM Passengers from the North travelling direct to Harwich via Lincoln and March, avoid loss of time, expense, and trouble of changing from one terminus to another in London. "The Steamers of the Great Eastern Railway Company are large powerful vessels of 1000 tons register and 2000 LHP., and are fitted with Dining, Smoking, and Ladies' Saloons, separate Sleeping Cabins, and are lighted by Electricity.

The steamers performing the Antwerp Service are Twin Screws, thus affording the greatest safety in case of any accident to the machinery, and the Saloons are forward of the Engines the same as in Atlantic Liners. THE BRUSSELS EXHIBITION, Open from May to October, 1888. Direct Route via HARWICH. RUBEXS, [Frontispiece, THE LAND OF RUBENS A COMPANION FOR VISITORS TO BELGIUM BY CONRAD BUSKEN HUET TRANSLATED FROJI THE DUTCH AND EDITED BY ALBERT D. VAN DAM ACTBOH OF "FAMOUS BOHEMIANS," " GEXIOS ES NEGLIGE," ETC, ETC, "Rubens has painted eveiything— fable, mythology, history, portraits, animals, flowers, landscape — and has shown himself superior in every genre. With the same impetuous brush that depicted battles of lions and Titans, Rubens wove garlands of cherubs, resplendent with mother-of-pearl and silver; aud after showing us the brutal debauch of a village fair, he had but to spread his wings to soar to the topmost heights wheie be joined Homer, Dante, Michael-Angelo and Shakespeare."

Preface

OF THE TRANSLATOR. The author of the original, whom many critics, especially French ones, have styled the Ste. Beuve of Holland, wrote for Dutchmen and chiefly for well-informed Dutchmen. He might therefore suppose them to have a thorough knowledge of their history and literature which would make certain extracts from less known works noi only intelligible bub welcome. It would have been absurd on the part of the translator to expect a similar knowledge among even the most cultured Englishmen. Hence he has omitted many things which without this knowledge would have proved so many puzzles, doomed to remain unsolved except at the cost of a great deal of research. These excisions have, however, in no way undermined the leading idea of the book. ALBERT D. VANDAM. London, March, 1888. PAGE 1 ii CONTESTS.

Chapter I

Arras — Its former tapestry looms — Its decay — The birthplace of Lebon and Robespierre — Its town-hall and belfry — From Arras to Lille— Characteristics — Its old and new buildings — Descriptions of the exchange, town-ball and picture-gallery .... ■

Chapter II

Lille and its museum — The Wicar Collection — The Waxen Head attributed to Raphael — The Second Section of the Lille Museum — Thc French School 10

Chapter III

The Lille Museum, Third Section— Its Drawings — The Old Flemish School — Rubens and Van Dyck — De Crayer — Old Dutch Masters : Franz Hals, Van Ravesteyn, De Keyser, De Hooghe— A piece of "Still Life" by Jacob Van Es of Antwerp 21

Chapter IV

From Lille to Ostend — Sea-bathing and art — Utter neglect of the old Flemish Masters ofthe sea — The modern Belgian author follows suit — From Ostend to Damme— Its town-hall — From Ostend to Ypres — Its hall and about Flemish halls in general

Chapter V

From Ostend to Ghent — Old and New Ghent — The city of the Van Eycks— The Van Eycks . . . . ' . .56 Contents. VIII

Chapter VI. Page

Ghent (continued)— Its Floriculture— Its two leguinages — Modern School of ecclesiastical architecture — The University, the theatre, the palace of justice — The Ghent of Jacob van Artevelde— The latter's place in history — The Ghent town hall — A reminiscence of the Renaissance. . 75

Chapter VII

Bruges — Its town-hall, the belfry, the Chapel of the Blood of the Redemption — The chimney in the former Hall of Justice — Bruges then and now — Festivities on the occasion of the marriage of Charles the Bold with Margaret of England — Hugo van der Goes — The legend about Hans Memling — Memling and his work 84

Chapter I. It

was at Arras that I saw — not heard — the first words of Flemish. They were printed on a red, black, and yellow poster inviting the inhabitants to Bruges on the occasion of a contemplated visit from King Leopold to the latter town. Eed, yellow, and black, a hint that we are approaching Belgium. Compared to Amiens with its thousands of looms, Arras is nowadays an insignificant place, with nothing but its corn trade, thriving more or less at certain periods of the year. Formerly things were different. The culture of the madder and some of the properties of the " Crinchon waters " helped the Arras tapestry weavers in the attainment of a celebrity, the proofs whereof may still be found in many an ancestral home on tho English side of the Channel, the most brilliant testimonial to which (the Battles of Alexander, given to Sultan Bajazet by Philip of Burgundy) adorns up to this moment the Seraglio in the Turkish capital.

What, indeed, but tapestry woven at Arras is meant at Rome by the Arazzi of Rafael, seven cartoons of which are in the South Kensing ton Museum t B Van Mander, in his "Book of Painters," tells us that the Abbey of St. Waest at Arras contained many remarkable pictures by Jan Vermeyen, the Dutch painter from Beverwyk ; who was the friend of Schoorl, and who with Moro stood high in the favour of Charles V. and Philip II. The particulars which of late years have come to light with regard to Vermeyen supply an interesting contribution to the history of the old masters of the Northern Netherlands. Do they justify us, though, in considering Vermeyen the anony mous painter of the "Adoration of the Magi," dated 1528, said to have belonged originally to the Abbey, and now to be seen in the principal church at Arras 1 I should not like to affirm as much.

Another sign that wre are getting near to Belgium. At Arras begins the series of old Flemish cities, whose prosperity is a thing of the past, whose rivers have become silent and stagnant waterways ; symbolical of stagnant industry, naviga tion and commerce. The capital of the erstwhile province of Artois might for any evidence to the contrary just as well be called Little Ypres or Little Bruges. Can the reader imagine this dead city to have been the birthplace of some of the most violent among the French Republicans of the last century 1 Can he imagine the cradle of Joseph Lebon to havo stood at Arras, Robespierre to have seen the first light at Arras, to have played in its streets, with the grass growing betwixt its stones 1 Possibly, however, there beat in the veins of these young Frenchmen of the latter part of the 18th century a powers id after-current of the Old-Flemish burgher blood, king-hating, liberty-loving.

At Arras one meets with the first of those magnificent town-halls whose restored remains convey such exalted ideas of the Flemish love of independence, as expressed in the middleclass architecture of Flanders. The belfry of Amiens looks like an anachronism and a caricature by the side of the belfry of Arras. In the great market-place of Brussels only does one find a wreath of old Flemish dwelling-houses, sur passing those of the Grande or Petite Place at Arras. From the Arras chronicles Robespierre may have learnt how citizens should set about beheading autocrats ; that there are means to found, in the blood dripping from the scaffold, tyrannical commonwealths on the ruins of tyrannical dynasties. Truly ; a curious sensation to be reminded one day. at Chan tilly of La Bruyere, the next of Robespierre !

Let us, however, read the following page. " One may see a lot of wild (shy) animals of both sexes scattered about the fields. They are black and grimy, livid and sunburnt, riven to the soil which they plough and upturn with invincible obstinacy. They have something like articulate voices, and when they rise to their they feet show a human face, for in fact, they are human beings. At night they retire to their lairs where they live on black bread, water, and roots. They save others the labour of sowing, tilling and reaping in order to live ; as such they ought not to want for the bread they have sown. The people have no gumption, and the great ones of the earth have no souls. The former are fundamentally good, but lack outward appear ance, the latter have nothing but show, and are all surface.

Am I to choose between them 1 Very well ; I do not hesitate ; I want to be of the people." " Bravo, Robespierre ! " we exclaim. " Bravo for having so strikingly portrayed in the persons of those wretched Breton peasants, ' obstinately bent upon getting themselves hanged,' the misery of the whole of France writhing beneath the heel of the old monarchy." "We commend you B for having shed so much innocent blood in order to destroy that hated tyranny root and branch. We honour you for having wished to be of the people. We, like you, would have felt the frenzy of revenge rush to our heads at the pitiful sight of those human brutes whose lot cried to Heaven. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. As it happens, however, the page just cited is not Robespierre's. It belongs to La Bruyere, who, a hundred years before the Revolution of '89, himself a victim of the unequal distri bution of human happiness, felt in his inmost heart that this inequality must at some time lead to a terrible outbreak in France.

Of Robespierre himself I never read anything that inspired me with the least sympathy. His cruelty appears to me to have had no other aim than to bring him where he wished to be, and when once there, to maintain him in the position. A cat transformed into a tiger, to be rid of only by killing him, and unworthy of the intercession of the Nether land patriots of '94. My inquiries in Arras after old tapestry were altogether fruitless. Whatsoever of the kind that was still available had, during the first Revolution, been destroyed by Robes pierre's cronies or sent over to England and sold there. Like Amiens, Arras used to boast a Gothic Cathedral of the 13th century, built by Villard de Honnecourt, as was that of Amiens built by Robert de Luzarches. It is not my fault that Pastor Joseph Lebon in the name of liberty and fraternity razed it to the ground.

Arras is one of the iron hinges on which the military defence system of Northern France swings and — creaks. In side the town there are scarcely any trees but those that are commencing a kind of ephemeral existence at the foot of the fortifications, planted to-day, cut down to-morrow. No THE LAND OF EUBENS. waterways except the rectangular moats, mirrors as it were for the shadows of the greenish walls of an artillery park. Am I to mention the public gardens on the western side of the archiepiscopal palace, the latter erected during the 18th century on the former site of the Abbey of St. Waest? The only remarkable thing by virtue of the richness of its Renaissance style of architecture is the town-hall and its clock-tower. Equally worthy of remembrance, though, are the old Flemish ' dwelling-houses in the smaller market square, all of them projecting over an ogival colonnade, extending round the four sides of the square, and serving as a footway, all of them uplifting their step-like gables as a silent but eloquent protest against a posterity devoid of style, all of them, to the right and to the left falling into line as it were like two wings of modest brick, in order to allow the carved front of the town-hall to make a better show, the coro netted pinnacle of the belfry to rise the prouder to the skies.

Onward to Lille, while warning the reader not to judge suburban Arras by what lies within its walls. How often in our lives do we become aware of the most delightful flowers in our paths after having heedlessly rushed past them ! On both sides of the broad avenue meandering from the city to the railway station, uprise thick-set and waving trees. When the train begins to move, and then only, it strikes one how peacefully, from that distance, the tiny city, girt with its verdant belt, lies basking in the sun. The horizon expands, the soil itself seems to swell, waving corn follows the line of waving hills. France's Northern granary lies spread before us, and Arras appears like an emerald set in bubbling gold. The native of a smaller country begets, on approaching Lille, the impression of a larger one in which the character- TUE LAND OF HUBENSistic existence of villages and cities finds little or no place ; where the commonweal strikes the key-note, where nature has more elbow-room than man, where the individual, through his surroundings, is constantly reminded of his own personal insignificance.

After Arras an impression such as this lacks sweetness. The hills are gradually replaced by level stretches ; the corn-fields change into barren moors, the wealth of the earth assumes a subterranean character, the kingdom of Ceres is succeeded by that of Vulcan, the smiling homesteads are transformed into high furnaces, the smoke from the gigantic chimneys hides the church steeples ; everything begins to look grimy. We are entering upon the coal period. Not that Lille itself looks grimier than you or I. That privilege is reserved for neighbouring Roubaix. Only, Lille is the city within whose walls the administrative factor of Northern France's industry elected to establish its centre; the city with its 130,000 inhabitants, which not withstanding its expansion during the Second Empire has remained a provincial town, where a great many fortunes of second rank, won in commerce or industry, have built unto themselves spick and span new, but rarely attractive, dwellings on both sides of spick and span new and dead-alive boulevards, where, notwithstanding its provincialism a cafe restaurant, of mushroom pedigree, but as princely in appearance as the most princely one in Paris, rears its mansard roof in the heart of the place, a cafe res taurant boasting a chef which another Gambetta might dis pute to another Duke de Noailles ; where, right and left of an erstwhile peaceful river, now transformed into a bustling ship-canal, lie two brand-new promenades; a smaller one relieved by mounds and knolls that were once bastions ; a larger at whose end there is an artificial waterfall, tumbling its waters over artificial rocks.

It is, in one word, the city where brawl loudest the kind of material interests that as yet have to win their patents of nobility, though they are perfectly conscious of not only being of their own time, but of having a future in store for them, where the current week boasts of dating only from the preceding one, taking care mean while to enjoy its gains ; where a public has still to be created to fill the American tramcars, but where Yankee " go-aheadism " is already entering into the manners and customs ; where the churches produce the impression of ana chronisms, inasmuch that they are not wanted, but simply tolerated ; where every outward manifestation of a higher life, every interest in science, literature, and art seems to be condensed in an insignificant opera-house. A Yankee town without suburbs, and whose most noteworthy artery of life — lauded by hackney drivers especially — is the hydraulic machine that pumps potable water for a distance of an hour and a half from a well, enclosed with brickwork, and situated in the midst of a barren plain.

Who, after this, will credit this selfsame Lille with two buildings that at a mere glance reconcile the visitor to the rest ! I must be very brief with regard to the Exchange, albeit that it is the chief architectural ornament of the city, and that it is impossible in one's drive from the railway station to the Great Market Place not to be struck with its characteristic aspect. I may take it that the reader knows its sister in Antwerp, the vast and most beautiful semi-Moorish hall with its lofty modern glass roofing. The Exchange at Lille is much smaller, but has the advantage of being visible from all sides. It is also a genuine sample of its kind, a well-preserved specimen of what in French Flanders is called the Old Spanish style, albeit that it is rather a reminiscence of the Italian renaissance ; adapted to the wants and the resources of the North.

Flemish is the red brick of the lofty walls and vaulted galleries ; Italian is the atrium, open to the sky, and serving as an inner court. Even the bronze statue of Napoleon I. clad in imperial vestment, which seems to have lost its way there, takes the mind back to Northern Italy, and brings in the Lille Exchange a reminiscence of Milan. Like within the walls of every temple consecrated to Mercury, the afternoons here are full of bustle r.nd noise. On the other hand solitude reigns in the morn ing, and one may loiter undisturbed under the delightful arcades, deeming them to be the cloisters of an abbey, rather than the haunts"of commerce. On the many-coloured marble memorial tablets — votive offerings of our days — the reader may decipher the golden record of noteworthy citizens of Lille.

Now and then the eye turns to the golden bees on the Imperial mantle of the modern French Cæsar. " Whence did he fetch those golden insects 1 " comes the question. Not far from here ; from Tournay, where a French stadt holder of the Southern Netherlands found them in the tomb of a Frankish king. They were presented to Louis XIV. Napoleon used them to oust the lilies. Of an equally Flemish and Italian character is the outside of the building. Below a quadrangle of elegant shops, bril liantly lighted at night, claiming attention in the day-time by their choice display of the latest fashions. A miniature Palais Royal turned inside out. Above these, two old-fashioned stories, one of ordinary and the other of dormer windows, a perfect quadrant of interlaced scroll-work in hewn stone con sisting of pilasters, caryatides, flowers, fruit.

Perhaps a little too much of ornamentation, though it has not drifted into bad taste, but just sufficient to produce the impression of great richness within a small compass. I failed to discover the name of the builder, the foundation is supposed to have been laid in 1652. A tiny turret peeps roguishly from above this monument of old Flemish architecture on the side of the market-place. The care with which about a quarter of a century ago this small tower was restored, its scroll-work cleansed of layers of whitewash and stucco, its medallions and caryatides reinstated in their pristine form, gives one a favourable idea of the artistic spirit that presides at the Municipal Council of Lille. A much more colossal building than the Exchange is the former Rihour Palace, greater part of which was destroyed by fire in the 18th century.

It was transformed into a town-hall during the latter years of Louis Philippe's reign, but with the exception of an ancient hall, that of the conclave, where previous to 1789 aldermen dispensed justice, the provincial parliaments met, nothing has been preserved. All the rest is new. There is no more civic character about this town-hall than there is about the famous Amsterdam one. A palace it was, a palace it has apparently become again ; only the princely apartments of the whole of the upper story, together with the double monumental staircase, have been from the beginning arranged as a local picture-gallery. The latter boasts such a wealth of handsome paintings, especially of the Flemish and Dutch schools, the Italian school is represented by such an abundance of drawings that one feels bound to mentally thank the architect, who turned the taste of his townsmen in this direction ; apart from the fact that, belonging to the draw ings of the " Wicar legacy " there is a piece of sculpture which the first museums of Europe may well envy the Lille one.

Chapter II

" /I WAXEN head of Raphael's time." — Such wasWicar's , sole designation when in 1834 he drew up in Rome the inventory of the old-Italian art collection which he shortly afterwards presented to his native town. In truth, one fancies to be looking at the transparent, softly tinted face of one of the models that must have sat for Raphael's madonnas. Innocence and gentleness dispute each other the palm in the expression of the features, they have settled on the pure brow, they play tranquilly and somewhat sadly around the mouth, they are crowned by the plaits of fair tresses. The first impression fully warrants Wicar's supposition. Nevertheless in a little while one begins to ask oneself whether this beautiful relic is not of much older date. In 1853 there were laid open at Cumæ, near Naples, some old Roman graves, from the time of Diocletian, whose contents confirmed the idea that in ancient times the heads of the ' dear departed " were replaced before burial by counterfeits in wax.

Not only among the Romans, but also among the Egyptians did this custom obtain. There is nothing to prove that the girl's head at Lille is not one of those re mains. The features show an indisputably antique character. The arrangement of the hair is Græco-Roman antiquity itself. The " Madonna smile " around the lovely mouth. the Raphaelesque in the drooping eyes need not surprise us. Raphael's " Madonna " has at all times, even when painted from life, been distinguished by a " something " partaking of the antique. The opinion of the connoisseur will probably hesitate between the twofold solution. No one knows for certain how the girl's head (not fully life-size) came into Wicar's possession. One can only surmise that it formed part of the Fedi collection in Florence, purchased by him in the first years of this century.

The most acceptable theory is that suggested by a comparison of some extracts from Vasari. He tells us that in the days of Verocchio, the master of Raphael's master, Perugino, also of Leonardo da Vinci, that in the days of Verocchio then, the art of model ling statues in wax attained in Florence a hitherto unknown degree of perfection. There was even a family named Benintendi — father, son, and grandson — who surpassed all others in that art. Orsino Benintendi was a personal friend of Verocchio, and the man who carved Colleoni's statue did not deem it beneath him to oblige Orsino with his skill in the taking of plaster casts. In comparing the method by which the girl's head at Lille was seemingly cast with the particulars indicated by Vasari concerning the method of Orsino, one cannot fail to be struck by a remarkable similarity.

Hence, one may take it to be a Florentine production of 1480 or thereabouts, the heyday of the Italian Renaissance. Be this as it may, of its kind the head is not only a matchless relic — the sole one that up to the present has been found — but is in itself a perfect work of art. Grecian antiquity has produced nothing nobler in its delicate genre ; at the same time it would surprise no one to find it belonging to Da Vinci. One conceives a liking for the Lillois by reason of the reverential care with which they have set apart for the Wicar legacy three galleries of their museum, which occupies the whole of the upper story of their well-built and stately town hall. Two of these galleries are connected by a corri dor ; leading out of the latter is the sanctuary for the '■ Waxen Head." " A small gallery," says the monograph by Louis Gonse, " soberly decorated, lighted from above by a soft and filtered light, is consecrated to a unique marvel, which every one knows at least by repute, and which, I may say without hesitation, is one of the gems of human art.

In this secluded spot which has the appearances of a sanctuary, the most indifferent feel a kind of respectful meditation stealing over them. The art productions left by Wicar had first of all been placed in the art and archæological museum of the town ; since then they have been collected in a glazed ebony cabinet. This cabinet, designed by M. Benvignat, the town architect, deserves special praise. It is after the antique, with pilasters supporting a frontage ; the construction of it is elegant and in excellent taste. Some of the objects are placed on shelves ; others, the smaller, are set in black wooden panels forming a whole with the rest of the decora tions, and producing the most elegant effect. In the centre a deep recess, the interior of which is covered with a coating of dull ormolu.

It is in this recess, in the place of honour, on a rounded pedestal of citron wood revolving on its pivot, that is placed the palladium of the museum, and for that matter of the whole town, the sweet and pensive waxen head." There exists a copy of the head, the property of Alexander Dumas the younger, who had it made for him by Cros the sculptor. That copy is also in wax, softly tinted. Those who have had the privilege of seeing it in the study of its fortunate possessor are loud in their expressions of its truth to the original. " It is a head from a higher sphere," wrote Dumas to a friend, "a human universe in miniature. Its expression conveys the picture of life, its frail material communicates the idea of death." In the estimation of the French, the Lille Museum justly occupies a foremost place, higher than any other provincial gallery.

At the first glance one meets with precious contribu tions to the history of French art itself. In fact the whole ofthe museum is a contribution of this kind. It wanted the first Revolution to create in France, if only on paper, art collec tions outside the capital. From abandoned palaces and castles, from despoiled or destroyed churches, from suppressed monasteries and convents, " seventeen hundred and ninety-three " flung piles of sacred and profane art productions in stables and warehouses and left them there. A consular decree of 1801 endeavoured to reduce this chaos to something like order, and selected certain provincial capitals for the foundation of public museums. It was only in 1813 that the scheme began to be carried out. But the beginnings were so small, so slow, that a museum like that of Lille can only be said to have properly asserted its existence in 1818.

During the half-century that elapsed meanwhile there was a terrible rummaging and spoliation of the stock. Numberless objects of value were brought to the hammer by ignorant municipal councils, and transformed into private property by knowing curiosity dealers. They were damaged by damp, or slowly nibbled up by rats and mice. In 1813, 350 rejected pictures were sold in Lille by order of the town council, and fetched barely four francs each. Rejected by whom 1 It was never known. Ait culture was at that time an unknown thing in the provinces. Most creditably did Louis and Francois Watteau (father and son) behave with regard to the Lille Museum between 1795 and 1823. Both, like their immortal uncle and grand-uncle, Antoine, hailed from Valenciennes. The museum possesses some fair canvasses of both, chiefly remarkable from the point of view of costume.

They are not masterpieces, though we should undoubtedly think more of them but for the recollection of Antoine, whose fame damages, in our estimation, and perhaps unde servedly, his nephews. Nor are the drawings and pictures of Wicar, to be found here, masterpieces. They are imitations of David, as whose pupil and travelling-companion he started for Italy in 1785 at the expense of his native town. He appears to have passed almost the remainder of his life there. Nevertheless, Wicar remained so good a Frenchman, " far away from the land of his birth," he so gratefully remembered the benevolence of his townsmen when he was but a poor joiner's 'prentice, his gratitude has been so signally proved by his valuable legacy, that one does not grudge him the place of honour in the museum with his more than life-size picture of " The raising of the Widow's Son " (of Nain).

Wicar's name given to part of the museum and to a quarter in the town lives in the world of French art, as an illustration of middle class worth, joined to his fame as an artist who was scarcely inferior to any other master of the second rank. I have a pleasant recollection of Wicar's portrait, painted by himself. To judge from the dress, it must have been painted in the transition period from the First Republic to the First Empire. The chin almost disappears in the folds of one of those roomy neckerchiefs brought into fashion by the Directory. The natural hair hangs as it were unkempt over the forehead. It is topped by a round hat, the forerunner of our stove-pipe, but whose low crown still possesses sufficient softness to admit of the fastening of a cockade without damaging its texture. A contemporary of Wicar and of Francois Watteau, but a more original artist than either, was Louis Boilly, capitally represented in Lille.