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Distributed for McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College

Nature’s Mirror

Reality and Symbol in Belgian Landscape

Since the Renaissance, art in Belgium and the Netherlands has been known for its innovations in realistic representation and its fluency in symbolism. New market forces and artistic concerns fueled the development of landscape as an independent genre in Belgium in the sixteenth century, and landscape emerged as a major focus for nineteenth-century realist and symbolist artists. Nature’s Mirror, and the exhibition it accompanies, traces these landmark developments with a rich array of seldom-seen works.
Nature’s Mirror presents its collection of prints and drawings in chronological order, exploring the evolving dialogue between subjective experience and the external world from the Renaissance through the First World War. Essays by American and Belgian specialists examine artists within the regional, political, and industrial contexts that strongly influenced them. Featuring more than one hundred works, many from the leading private collection of Belgian art in America, the Hearn Family Trust, Nature’s Mirror explores the evolution of Belgian art in this fruitful period with remarkable lucidity and detail.
 

225 pages | 105 color plates, 75 halftones | 10 x 12 | © 2017

Art: European Art


Table of Contents

PREFACE
 
HISTORICAL OUTLINE AND MAP
 
NATURE’S MIRROR: REALITY AND SYMBOL IN BELGIAN LANDSCAPE
 
HENRI DE BRAEKELEER AND BELGIAN LANDSCAPE PAINTING IN THE 1870S AND 1880S
 
“BELGIUM IS AN INDUSTRIALIST”: PRIDE AND EXPLOITATION IN THE BLACK COUNTRY, 1850-1900
 
FERNAND KHNOPFF’S LANDSCAPES: NATURE AS MIRROR
 
“AND THE CLOUDS STAGNATE ON THE WATER’S FACE”: BRUGES AS A CROSS-ROADS OF EUROPEAN SYMBOLISM
 
SERRES CHAUDES: INSIDE-OUTSIDE, OUTSIDE-INSIDE
 
THE FOUR SEASONS OF LÉON SPILLIAERT’S MIND
 
PLATES
 
CONTRIBUTORS
 

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