Groeningemuseum, Musea Brugge

Here we find six centuries of Belgian visual arts in a single location, with work by Flemish primitives including Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling, and Gerard David, neoclassicism by Joseph Denis Odevaere and Joseph Ducq, as well as Flemish expressionism and twentieth-century modern art by René Magritte, Roger Raveel, and Raoul De Keyser.

The museum’s core collection consists of Flemish Primitives. This nucleus includes superb works by the leading masters of early Netherlandish painting from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries: Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling, Hugo van der Goes, Gerard David, Jheronimus Bosch, and their contemporaries. It is one of the finest collections in the world, with paintings that stand out as milestones in European art history.

The museum also has in its collection treasures by Renaissance and Baroque masters, such as Ambrosius Benson, Lancelot Blondeel, Pieter Pourbus, Pieter Brueghel (II)? , : Jacob van Oost (I)? , and Peter Lely.

In addition, it houses a very refined selection of neoclassical work produced in Bruges in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Artists such as Joseph-Benoît Suvée, Jean Bernard Duvivier, Joseph Ducq, Joseph Denis Odevaere and Franciscus Josephus Kinsoen made an international career with their history paintings and elegant portraits.

Symbolism is represented with an undisputed masterpiece by Fernand Khnopff. Another striking section consists of paintings by the Flemish expressionists, with works by Permeke, De Smet, Van de Woestyne, and Brusselmans. The Groeninge Museum owns almost all the printed publications by Marcel Broodthaers.

The Groeningemuseum is administered by Musea Brugge.

Laurence Van Kerkhoven, Curator of Painting (Baroque-Present) and Anne van Oosterwijk, Director of Collections (November 2022)