Locomotives and carriages from the Legrand collection will take you on a trip to the heart of a unique artistic journey devoted to the theme of the train. Departure from the Belgian Royal Museums of Fine Arts.
Like numerous artists, Raymond Legrand was always fascinated by trains. A great enthusiast of model making, he devoted a great part of his life to building a reduced model of a railway, several hundred metres long on a scale of 1:22.5. He reproduced real railway vehicles including locomotives, carriages and goods wagons that were in use on the SNCB network (the Belgian railway) at the start of the 20th century and some of these were even motorised.
Entrusted to the King Baudouin Foundation in 2019, this unique collection in the world has now been saved for the future and made accessible to the general public.
18 pieces from the collection are currently being exhibited at the Belgian Museums of Fine Arts as part of their latest exhibition « Voies de la modernité » (Tracks of Modernity). Organised for the opening of the Europalia festival, the exhibition offers a unique artistic trip around the theme of the train, the ultimate symbol in the early 19th century of modernity in the West. From its arrival in Belgium in 1835, with the first railway line linking Brussels and Mechelen, the train fostered the wildest hopes of development and wealth creation.
Circulating alongside the works of major artists such as Monet, Caillebotte, Spilliaert, Boccioni, Severini, Léger, De Chirico, Mondrian, Servranckx, Caviglioni, Delvaux and Magritte, the trains from the Legrand collection serve to illustrate the fascination we still feel today about journeys by train.
To discover until 13 February 2020.
Practical details:
Belgian Museums of Fine Arts
Rue du Musée 9
1000 Brussels