Belgium — from Ensor to Magritte

After breakfast we set out for the Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts. After some time to view the museum’s wider collection – treasures include works by Bruegel, Bosch and Rubens – we head for the Fin-de-Siècle galleries to explore the many styles and artists that contributed to this broad international movement. Our time here will provide a good introduction to the sites of our afternoon walk, which will take in some of Brussels’ architectural Art Nouveau treasures, including a tour of Hôtel Solvay, Horta’s radiant UNESCO-listed masterpiece, and a special private guided visit to the Horta Museum. The evening is free for independent activities.

We travel coach to the Musée Constantin Meunier, stopping en route to view Meunier’s Monument to Labour, a symbol of 19th-century industrial Belgium depicting the working man and woman in different settings. It is a theme that preoccupied the artist throughout his later, or ‘second’, life, and the focus of the museum, which is in his former studio and home. In the afternoon, we visit the Horta-Lambeaux Pavillon, the structure designed by a young Horta to house Jef Lambeaux's sculpture ‘The Human Passions’. Neoclassical in presentation, it nevertheless displays some interesting shadows of the Art Nouveau style that Horta would later pioneer. Our final visit of the day is to the Wiertz Museum where we encounter some of the most dramatic and enormous works of the romantic painter and sculptor, Antoine Wiertz.

This morning we bid farewell to Brussels and travel to the coastal city of Ostend, lifelong home of the painter James Ensor. After a coffee break in our new hotel, we walk to the James Ensor House, preserved as he left it. Ensor was an important influence on the development of both expressionism and surrealism, and his home offers a unique and intimate insight into the artist’s mind. Most of the artworks now on display here are replicas, but a visit to the nearby Mu.ZEE, which specialises in Belgian art from 1830 onwards, will bring us face to face with many originals. We walk back to the hotel via the Kursaal Casino, a striking modernist building designed by Leon Stynen (1953), with interior murals by the surrealist painter Paul Delvaux. In the evening, we enjoy dinner together.

We journey to Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-ter-Duinenkerk, known locally as the Ensor Kerk (Ensor Church) because its small cemetery is now Ensor’s final resting place. Then we visit St Idesbald-Koksijde, where we can examine the dream-like works of Paul Delvaux at the Paul Delvaux Museum – the largest collection of the artist’s work anywhere in the world. Close by, the elegant historic town of Veurne will offer us the chance for some independent exploration and lunch before we return to Ostend, where we will find the Spilliaert House. Opened in 2016, the charming seafront museum is dedicated to the painter and graphic artist Léon Spilliaert (1881-1946), whose eerie, luminous works frame lone, ghostly figures. Spend this evening at leisure.

After breakfast we check out of our hotel and depart Ostend for Sint-Martens-Latem, where the stylish Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens holds a fabulous private collection of (mostly) Flemish modern and contemporary art. A special lunch together is the perfect way to round off our tour and afterwards there will be time to make one final stop to the home and museum of Gustave De Smet (1880-1943), another important figure in the European expressionist movement. Travel home on the late afternoon Eurostar to London.