Exhibition - At the moment
WANDERLUST: Old landscapes in a new perspective
From 13 December 2024
Each painting in this museum once started as a blank, white canvas. What was empty was eventually filled by the artist with colour, form, and meaning. The simple white surface gained depth through a skillful use of perspective, and the void space was filled with evocative layers of imagery. From stream to hill to horizon, the landscape unfurled further, into a world that demanded to be inhabited by figures of all kinds.
In this temporary collection display, 17th-century landscapes unfold as vibrant spectacles. Nature takes center stage, with majestic mountains, picturesque villages, and endless skies serving as a dramatic backdrop. Populated by humans and animals, each painting becomes a carefully staged scene in which light and shadow intensify emotions and tensions.
How realistic are these vistas? Or are they entirely products of the painter’s imagination? The answer lies somewhere in between. Each work invites close inspection, offering a moment for reflection and a chance to lose oneself in an alternate reality.
The Snijders&Rockox House.
Nicolaas Rockox and Frans Snijders were key figures in Antwerp during the Baroque era.
Each made his mark on the city’s cultural and social life – Nicolaas as burgomaster and Frans as a brilliant painter of animals and still lifes. They were also next-door neighbours for 20 years in Keizerstraat.
Their original homes, now carefully restored, both belong to KBC, which opened the Rockox House as a museum some years ago and is now doing the same with the Snijders House.
The everyday world of 17th-century citizens will be evoked through items from the museum’s own collection, supplemented by loans from museums and private collections in Belgium and abroad.
We will be able to view Nicolaas and Frans’s domestic environment through their own eyes, along with the making and promotion of art, collecting and display, markets and richly set tables, nature and gardens, and the humanist and the average citizen in the turbulent era in which they lived.
