From the museum website
The world-renowned Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels stand as Belgium’s largest art museum. The collections number approximately 20,000 works, and include paintings, drawings and sculptures dating from the early Flemish period in the 15th century through the 20th century. The collection’s mature range of works is completely apropos for this land that was home to the birth of oil painting.
This exhibition will display approximately 70 oil paintings and 39 drawings, covering close to 400 years of Belgium’s art history. Works featured in the exhibition include those by such Flemish masters as Bruegel, Rubens, Van Dyke, and Jordaens, along with the Symbolists Knopf and Ensor, and the 20th century Surrealist paintings by Magritte and Delvaux.
Of particular note in this exhibition is the first Japanese display of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Fall of Icarus, one of the scant 40 oil paintings extant by this master. In recent years, various new theories and debates have centered on Bruegel the Elder. This painting, with its fascinating landscape depiction replete with a sense of light and atmosphere, is also characterized by delicately brushed details and a somehow mysteriously strange mood. The Fall of Icarus has long been familiar to art audiences worldwide as the face of the Royal Museum, and indeed, of Belgium itself. We hope that you will enjoy this gathering of the finest Flemish masterworks and modern Belgian painting from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium.