Sunday 13 July 2008

Bruges - then and now



Jenny and I had five nights in Bruges, 30th June - 4th July. The main reason for our visit, of course, was Jenny's interest in Jan Van Eyck and 'early Netherlandish' painting. But there was a second 'research' element of a more private kind.

My (maternal grandmother) Gran's brother, Leslie Haydn Reeve (1891 - 1919) was, like his sister and his parents, a teacher. Family tradition has it that he worked in Belgium before the First World War, and that Gran (not yet married) had a holiday with him in Belgium, in the course of which they visited Bruges. More concretely, we have, pasted in to Auntie Tot's Friendship book, a small water-colour sketch apparently signed by Uncle Leslie, that we have long suspected was of somewhere in Bruges.
We, now we know - it is.

The bridge is De Sleutelbrug, at the north end of Speelmansrei. The church is St Jacobskerk. The little chapel at the left of the painting was once the guild chapel of the Bruges Speelmansrei - the professional musicians who in medieval times had the monopoly of playing for weddings etc. in the city. And I would like to acknowledge the kindness of the staff in the Regional Development office on JanVanEyck Plein who put us on the right track.

Finding the place - inevitably - raised new questions. In reality, the church is more distant than the sketch shows it, and in fact, is only visible from the Speelmansrei / Artoisstraat are at certain angles. We couldn't pin down an actual viewpoint corresponding to that implied in Uncle Leslie's sketch. We came away, in fact, uncertain whether there was such a viewpoint, or whether the view as painted might not be a conceived view, a theoretical answer to the questions of view and perspective.

Anyone who's been to Bruges will know that there is a popular 'template' for views of the city - "canal, bridge, distant tower" - which you can find exemplified in postcard after postcard, as well as in paintings old and new. However, we found only one painting which related to this locality and view - De Speelmansrei in Brugge by Albert Baertsoen, (1895), which we were fortunate to catch in the 'Brugge in de verf' exhibition at the Gruuthuse - a big, splendid, vigorous in pasto oil from a viewpoint much farther back along Speelmansrei (and, I suspect, a slightly 'tweaked' perspective). We also found two old photos, probably postcards, in a Tempus 'old photos of Bruge' book - but no modern ones.

The two photos below are: a straight shot of me on de Sleutelbrug; and a pano/stitch based on four radiating shots from the middle of the bridge. (Pano made with Autostitch).