Antwerp 1

After three pleasant days in Amsterdam, we drove back to Antwerp, a city we'd never visited before. The traffic jams were gone, and we found our way easily to the municipal camper stop at Antwerp Expo, about a 10 minute bus ride to the historic district. Antwerp has some great museums which were our primary goals. But first some pix of this beautiful city from our various walks...

In the main square, the cathedral tower above, from the next
big square over

Another beautiful old city square

As elsewhere in this part of the world, guild houses...

Ditto

Beautiful city

Famous fountain

Attempted artsy-fartsy shot of guild house and cathedral
tower; atop the guild house is a sailing ship, emblematic,
for me, anyway, of Antwerp's historic (and contemporary)
importance as one of the world's great ports

Antwerp's cathedral; in another post, we'll
go inside, mostly for the art

Judgment typanum over the main west door; nice Jaws of Hell
on the right side

Van Gogh Museum

So on a rainy Wednesday afternoon we finally made good on a pledge made in Arles, in 2010, and again in 2011 and again in 2012, that we would visit Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum. We had already seen it in 1979, or 1989, but, hey, things change, and in particular, our appreciation of such things certainly has changed. It is a one-person museum, of course, although there are many works by other famous artists who influenced Van Gogh. But as a one-person museum, it permits insight into the artist and to the forces to which he responded, into his development as an artist, that are not available in the usual stray collection of his works. I am not a Van Gogh fan, personally, but I thought this museum did a wonderful job in displaying such things.

Didn't we see this guy in Paris? Musee D'Orsay?

The theme of the exhibition currently is "Van Gogh at work," and
these really are his palette and paint tubes from Paris

I won't try to do this in order nor weave a
Van Gogh narrative; here's a famous painting
of a chair, later 1880s, I'd say

His first big gig was with the Amsterdam Cancer Society
(nyuk, nyuk, nyuk)

Vicki in a Van Gogh chair in the museum bookstore

Extremely famous bedroom scene

Self-portrait with straw hat

He did some very few "religious" pieces: this is Jesus' raising Lazarus; Jesus
apparently is the one with the big boobs; Van Gogh went back to gardens and
wheat fields after this

Thus; the garden at the mental hospital where he lived for a while

Wheat field with storm approaching; prophetic?

Interlude: rainy day shot of the Rijksmuseum from the Van Gogh Museum

Toulouse-Lautrec's portrait of Van Gogh; too loose 
for me

Gaugin's portrait of Van Gogh

At last, in 1890, he walked out into a wheat field and shot himself, still a relatively
young man, and seeming finally to have found his unique vision...

Amsterdam Again

We were Saturday and Sunday in Brugge and thought we would do Antwerp next. But then we cleverly noticed that Antwerp's museums were closed on Monday. So we decided to make Monday a travel day, to Amsterdam, to pick up some items left in storage there, meet new friends, and see the Van Gogh museum.  The travel went smoothly, barely moving actually, in humongous traffic jams around Antwerp, but we got to Amsterdam in good order and found Camping Gaasper, by far the best camping arrangement we have seen for Amsterdam. The city is a straight shot in on the Metro: the station is a few hundred meters from the campground, then one change where you merely cross to the other side of the platform where the second train is waiting for you. Twenty minutes, tops, and you are at Amsterdam's central station.

Students of this blog know that we have been to Amsterdam a number of times, most recently in 2011 and 2012, when we stored the Grey Wanderer there. It is another city of great art and distinctive architecture, and we mostly enjoy just walking around, taking in the canal culture, the fries, the beer, the buildings, the interesting shops and weird people, etc. Perhaps it's my advancing age, but Amsterdam seems to be getting tamer. Drugs and prostitution and general lewdness were far less in evidence this visit. Perhaps it's everyone's advancing age. Perhaps we just go to bed earlier now. Perhaps it was just late May and the swarms, throngs, and hordes of American college students had not yet arrived. Anyhow, here is a miscellany from just walking around Amsterdam.

Amsterdam central station

Famous building

Drug store

Red lights

Bicycle parking garage near the central station

Canal scene

Ditto

Bicycle crash scene; they got up, dusted themselves off,
said sorry, and were back on their respective ways

Another canal scene

Line to get into the Ann Frank House

Street scene, another part of the city (out by the
Museumsplein)

Art Nouveau police station of yore

At the very forgettable flower market

A very rare sight: two American campers, MT and SD license
plates...turned many heads in the campground; most
Europeans have never seen an American camping car, one
from the US; when I sense someone has a sense of humor
and command of English, I tell them we took the Transatlantic
Tunnel (five days, lousy scenery), or that Montana is a small
principality tucked in between Spain and Andorra ("and this
is my wife, Queen Vicki")

Larry and Joyce, embarking on their European motorhome
odyssey; bon voyage!

Brugge Art

Followers of this blog know that we have a special interest in and affection for the art of the later Medieval and Renaissance North. Where we are now, in the so-called Low Countries, is where it began. Much of that art was dispersed to the invading Spanish and Hapsburg armies and courts and cities over the centuries. And indeed we have seen it all over Europe. All over. Everywhere. (Ask me about Bosch and the Prado). It was Jan van Eyck, in the early 1400s, who began mixing pigment with oil and who achieved clarity, detail, color, richness, and more that the world had never seen in painting. It was nearly a century, well after the high Renaissance was over there, before oil painting became the practice in Italy. Van Eyck's successors, Rogier van der Weyden, Memling, Provost, Bosch, the Breughels, Durer, and others carried the tradition further, and much of their work is still here. That's mostly why we came to Brugge. We'll see the crowning masterpiece of the early northern era, van Eyck's Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, when we visit Ghent in a week.

Brugge's museums have their act together in many ways, not
least this delivery truck, itself worthy of study

Our first stop was the Hospital of St. Jan; for reasonably
healthy atheists, we seem to spend a lot of time in churches
and hospitals; oh well, this is a treasure chest, decorated
by Memling, the sufferings and martyrdom of St. Ursula
(and the 11,000 virgins who accompanied her)

Virgin and Child, by an anonymous 14th century master; not
a master of anatomy, however

Upper floor of the main hall of the hospital, with vaulting
exposed

Memling's great altarpiece of the two Johns (baptist and
evangelist), done for the Hospital

Anything concerning any of the
evangelist Johns--scholars argue there were
at least three hands behind the works
attributed to him by the early Church--
is worthy of further examination; here he is,
receiving the Revelation

Seven-headed aerial combat, just as we saw in Angers

Devotional diptych of Mother and Child and Maartin van
Nieuwenhoven, by Memling 

Up closer, with this very early mirror shot; the first, of course,
was a van Eyck, and generation before; mirror shots would 
become quite the thing in Flemish painting (and Spanish) in 
a couple more centuries...

Another Memling triptych, that of (commissioned by) Adriaan
Reins

And now we move to the Groeningmuseum; a Last Judgment
by Jan Provost

Who apparently was taking lessons from Bosch

Speaking of whom, here is a Bosch Last Judgment; just like
in the Prado, the Bosch here draws crowds, and people like
us can spend very long periods of time looking at them

Since any few square inches of these works
yield interesting insights...about what, we
are not sure...the late Medieval mind, the mind
of Hieronymus Bosch, trouble brewing in the
religious world of the time...still one cannot
help being impressed, even awed

Memling's Moreel triptych (the donor)

Rogier van der Weyden's "St. Luke Drawing
the Madonna"--we conjecture St. Luke is the
patron saint of artists (?)

And here, for the skeptical, is Lancelot
Blondeel's "St. Luke Painting the Madonna"

And perhaps this museum's most famous piece, van Eyck's
Madonna with Canon Joris van der Paele (again, the donor);
the lighting was terrible; this is a large, almost life-sized
painting; the color and detail are breath-taking