Last day in Brussels

Finally I got up to the Palais de Justice. Yet another lowering thought: I must have walked and cycled past it numerous times in the 1980s and I don’t think I have any recollection of it, for all its monstrosity. According to Wikipedia, it was considered to be one of the biggest buildings in the world when it was constructed (1866-83 by Joseph Poelaert). I look at it and think that when it was completed Leopold II took the Congo under his personal rule: not an elevating thought. The building squats over the little streets below (there’s a lift up to it) and dominates the view from the royal quarter. It looks semi-derelict, with buddleia sprouting out of the stonework and roadblocks on the long slopes up to the entrance from Marolles. It is said that the scaffolding has been up for so many years that it too is now in need of renovation.

And so to another slightly odd building: the Old England (1899 by Paul Saintenoy), a former department store and now the museum of musical instruments. It’s a reminder of the modernity of Art Nouveau in its use of steel and plate glass (which does give it a slight meccano feel). Inside there are chestnut leaf motifs everywhere – leading me to wonder how much people missed the natural world as their environment became ever built-up, crowded and noisier, with the clang of trams replacing the wake-up crow of the cockerel depicted in mosaic or sgraffito on the new houses.

Actually, the musical instrument part of the museum was unexpectedly interesting thanks to the audio guide which “played” the instruments before you. The harpsichords and spinets, once their lids were unfolded, resembled miniature stage sets with their intricate paintings and decorations.

A quick look at the former Waucquez warehouse (Victor Horta, 1906) – now the comic art museum – and then a relaxed lunch in the Palais des Beaux Arts (Horta, 1929). This is Art Deco rather than Art Nouveau – leaving me open to the idea of an Art Deco tour in Brussels!

The queue outside the Musée des Beaux Arts which had deterred us in the morning was now negligible, so I headed in for the Fin de Siècle and more déjà vu: I had spent a Sunday afternoon here 8 years ago, and I’m pretty sure that I stopped by the same paintings. The Belgian artists who looked at workers through Roman Catholic eyes, painting triptychs that evoked Calvary and including a semi- transparent Virgin and Child in a Breughel-like Sunday afternoon scene. (Van Woestyne again.)

Léon Frederic I find bizarrely fascinating. Between him, Breughel, Van Gogh and Brel, the Flemish peasant gets a pretty raw deal publicity-wise. His realism makes me think of Hubert von Herkomer, but the babies . . . ?! They are quite gruesome, and the idea of using them to represent water flowing to its resting place makes them look like either crazed ankle-biters or drowned rag dolls.

In my opinion, obvs.

After all this, I was ready to come out on the side of the shameless carousers below rather than the virtuous workers. There really are loads of wonderful paintings, though – without even going to the upper galleries. The beguiling oddness (to say nothing of the way his name is spelled) of Fernand Khnopff; the painting of seven different views of his sister was mirrored by Burne- Jones and his indistinguishable females. The predominantly decorative qualities of Vuillard and Wouters. Ensor looking like a Sickert bad dream. The surreal quality of the pensive storks.

And finally, the furniture and ornaments that recalled a visit to Nancy ten years ago and my (witting) introduction to Art Nouveau. Louis Majorelle, Emile Gallé and Antonin Daum: the names came back to me. Beautiful objects, and I could certainly live with the light fitting . . . but, as in Nancy, after three days I was longing for some straight lines and sharp angles.

Maison Cauchie and more

A brisk walk this morning along unlovely boulevards towards the Parc du Cinquantenaire. Our route took us past the Palais de Justice, which is even more grotesquely domineering close up than from a distance. First stop (with a sense of relief at leaving a commercial district for a residential one) was to the Hôtel Van Eetvelde (now the headquarters of the gas industry – and why not?) which is notable for the metalwork covering its façade like a visor. Next was the Maison Saint-Cyr, whose flamboyance disguises the fact that it occupies a very narrow plot.

My only interior visit this holiday was to the Maison Cauchie (a second time). It’s remarkable for its Mackintosh-inspired sgraffiti and its Japonisme. The latter is represented by the geometric shapes (squares and circles) of the ironwork and the torii shape at the top, echoing an open Japanese gate marking the transition between the sacred and the secular. Unlike earlier Art Nouveau buildings, it is perfectly symmetrical in form. Cauchie also designed the house as a bit of self-advertisement for him and his wife – hence the advertising sgraffiti at eye-level. It’s a Gesamtkunstwerk – somewhat wrecked by his daughter’s preference for wallpaper and whitewash after his death. But would you really want to live with a salon dripping in lissome, semi-naked women representing the five senses? Answers on a postcard, please.

It was a fascinating visit, despite being a repeat – leading me to the lowering conclusion that I have forgotten more than I have ever learned. Our return route was through the arches of the Cinquantenaire down to the Grand-Place. Wonderful . . . but crowded.

Saint Gilles and Ixelles

Today we walked miles looking at Art Nouveau exteriors. Extra miles for me since I baulked at visiting the Horta Museum for a third time and headed off to look for the Maison Nelissen instead. (It’s on the front cover of the invaluable “Secret Brussels” guidebook which I bought on Wednesday in Waterstones on Tottenham Court Road. It’s perfect for our kind of flâneuring.)

The conventions soon become clear: motifs from the natural world, a little bit of whiplash for the exterior (and lots more for the interior, as I recall). The dragonfly balcony on Horta’s house. Not hiding – even making a feature of – the iron supporting structures as in the Hôtel Tassel. (That, along with the house on rue Jef Lambeaux, was my favourite.) The passage-of-day mosaics on Place Louis Molichar were exactly the same – sunrise, cockerel, crescent moon, owl – as on yesterday’s view of Louise Dehem’s house. You really could devise an “I Spy” book for Art Nouveau! New ideas, new ways of building (cast iron lintels and plate glass) combined, perhaps, with a nostalgia for the natural world in a fast-growing, polluted city. Plus fashion and a critical mass of architects and artists whose designs and ideas were briefly dominant.

And then to something very specific: a look at the house on Chaussée de Charleroi where I lived for a few weeks in 1984 and 1985 in what now I view as squalor but which at the time seemed OK. I had three different rooms over the time, and I recall sitting in the enclosed bay on the first floor (the only room I had with proper washing facilities!) reading “Our Mutual Friend”. Listening to Robert Robinson on Radio 4 talking of Mr Twemlow had prompted me to buy the book. I didn’t even notice that I was living in the middle of so much architectural history – but I knew the baker’s round the corner where I could get a delicious cramique and have it sliced, which was of far more significance.

Van Buuren House

And so to Brussels. Having dumped our cases, we headed across Saint Gilles in the drizzle, stopping occasionally to look at some Art Nouveau houses. (Sunflowers – tick. Peacock window – tick. Coloured glass, balcony ironwork, Japonisme, asymmetry, birds – tick, tick, tick.) Not all of them were in good condition.

But our destination was a later building – the Van Buuren house, built for a Dutch banker and his wife in 1928. Outside the style is Amsterdamse School with hollow-pointed red brick; inside it’s a cosy version of Eltham Palace. Big windows and floral rugs link the garden to the living space, with a nice corner by the fireside in the sitting room that I coveted. Everything is of the finest: the dining room is sycamore, Brazilian rosewood and Makassar ebony for example. Sometimes the sumptuous tastefulness is gruesome: the “blotter” on Van Buuren’s desk is shagreen, which in this case is composed of the bellies of 19 white sharks. There were several paintings by Gustave van de Woestyne, whom I had come across in Bruges, combining Breughel and Expressionism.

All lovely to look at and lovingly maintained, and by the end of our Art Nouveau binge I will be thinking longingly of those straight lines . . . but the shagreen (with the grotesque central “pearls”) left me under no illusions about the price paid for such perfection.