If it's Tuesday, This Must be Belgium - 12/9/08

Welcome back to Tuesday...in Belgium.  Yes, I'm actually in Belgium.  It's almost Christmas here in Brussels and the city is starting to deck itself out for the holidays.  We've even had quite a bit of snow over the last two weeks, though it doesn't usually build up downtown.  Still, it looks nice.

Since when it isn't snowing it generally is raining (or threatening to) I thought I would take you into the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.  The museum (actually museums) have many Belgian and Dutch artists, as well as a smattering of well know artists such as Magritte, Picasso, Dali and David.  While they have a few Magritte works, they are in the process of expanding into another building which will highlight the Belgian surrealist artist.



Actually, the statue above is not in the Royal Museum.  To find this gem (which is roughly 10 times life size) you walk through a passageway into a small courtyard.  A little hard to find unless you're headed for the clothing store behind it, but worth the look.

This old Romanesque statue is in another little hidden gem of a square near Rue Neuve (another shopping district in Brussels).


Okay, time to head into the Royal Museum.  The following statue is in the main lobby.


Okay, you do know I'm partial to sculpture, right?  I really liked the close up of this one.

Then this more traditional one

The museum has a more classical section that mostly resides in a beautiful upper tier of the museum.  Here they have many Peter Paul Rubens paintings.

I also liked the modern art section, which had one Picasso and a handful of Dali, like this one (The Temptation of St. Anthony).

However, my second most favorite painting in the Royal Museum is this one, a painting by the Belgian artist Jules Schmalzigaug of his friend Baron Francis Delbeke.  He is painted as "a sharp-witted intellectual, perusing documents at his desk."  Not sure why I like this one so much.

Of course, I did say that the above was my "second" most favorite painting in the Museum.  My first is one that I have marveled at since I was a kid.  I recall in high school (or somewhere) studying about the French Revolution and saw a photo of this painting by Jacques-Louis David called La Mort de Marat (The Death of Marat), who was one of the key players in the Revolution and a friend of David's.  So I can add this to my list of favorite paintings that I now have seen in their home locations.

Okay, enough dead people.  It stopped raining and is snowing so lets step back outside to see the Brussels town hall lit up at night.

You can see the colored poles.  They, along with a huge Christmas tree that was in the midst of having thousands of lights put on it, now highlight the center of the Grand Place.

They even have floodlights and snowflakes projected onto the building.

Tomorrow night I have a dinner meeting nearby the Grand Place so I'm hoping the weather is nice (please, please, please) so I can drop by and see everything completely lit up. 

Okay, last photo is the biggest (littlest) tourist attraction in Brussels - the Manneken Pis.  I finally took a photo of it, but frankly I can do a better one.


That's it for this week.  Sorry I missed one or two...issues with work and home computers, plus some business travel kept me away.

Until next week.

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