25 Jun '19

First year of Flemish Masters draws more than one million visitors

Summary

The first year of the Flemish Masters promotion saw tourists and locals alike flocking to Antwerp for Rubens and other artistic attractions

 

Master plan

An initiative to promote Flanders as a destination for art enthusiasts has been a resounding success so far, according to tourism minister Ben Weyts. In its first year, more than one million visitors were drawn to exhibitions and other events in the Flemish Masters programme, which runs until 2020.

VisitFlanders has invested €26 million in 16 projects around the Flemish Masters. In 2018, the focus was on Pieter Paul Rubens, while this year Pieter Bruegel the Elder has come to the fore. In 2020, attention will shift to the van Eyck brothers.

“It pays to bet on the assets that distinguish Flanders from other tourist destinations,” said Weyts, announcing the results.

Promotion of Rubens has naturally focused on his home town of Antwerp, which attracted 1,034,000 visitors in 2018, more than half of them from abroad. The Rubens exhibitions in the city together counted 975,000 visitors, some 400,000 more than expected.

Rubens is a first-class, international commodity that we have started to more fully take advantage of

- Minister Ben Weyts

Dutch, German and British tourists were particularly numerous among visitors to Antwerp, with 62% of foreign visitors staying overnight. This is an important goal if a city is to reap an economic benefit from tourism.

“Rubens is a first-class, international commodity that we have started to more fully take advantage of,” said Weyts. “In so doing, we are attracting an audience that not only visits the tourist sites, but also wants to see the rest of Flanders. In addition, they visit both during and outside the classic tourist season.”

In addition to the giants of Flemish art, the programme has also pulled some lesser-known figures into the spotlight. An exhibition on Adriaen Brouwer last year in Oudenaarde was particularly successful, with 52,000 visitors, about 2,000 more than expected.

The Flemish Masters initiative has been helped by press coverage around the world, with more than 900 articles published about the project in the international media. Awareness of this history of Flemish painting is also rising at home. When the local public was surveyed in 2016, scarcely 50% found the concept familiar. Now awareness stands at 70%.

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Flemish Primitives

The painters known as the Flemish Primitives lived and worked in the Low Countries in the 15th and early 16th centuries. They marked a crucial period in Flemish art history and had a tremendous influence on their counterparts across Europe.
Distinctive - The painters known as the Flemish Primitives lived and worked in the Low Countries in the 15th and early 16th centuries. They marked a crucial period in Flemish art history and had a tremendous influence on their counterparts across Europe.
Innovation - The Flemish Primitives are credited with being the first to use oil paint on panels (a mixture called tempera was used before then) and for innovative techniques with oil paint.
Who’s who - The most influential of the Flemish Primitives were Rogier van der Weyden and Jan van Eyck. Others included Hubert van Eyck (Jan’s brothers), Hans Memling, Hugo van der Goes, Hieronymus Bosch, Jan Maelwael and Petrus Christus.
1 432

Van Eyck brothers create The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, also known as the Ghent Altarpiece, one of the masterpieces of the period

35 000

visitors attended first-ever exhibition about Flemish primitives in Bruges in 1902

1

million euro, cost of Ghent altarpiece restoration, due to be completed in 2017

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