Horatio's Gardens

My particular restorative floral green space

 Chelsea Physic Garden established in 1673.

A perfect day weather-wise with the anticipated cascade of notes from ‘my’ visiting blackbird to charm the air. His intermittent daily serenade is predictably and refreshingly nourishing. I sat on my terrace which is looking delightful now, for coffee then a reading break and I noticed in the weekend Financial Times magazine, a lovely article entitled Mind, Body And Soul, by Clare Coulson, about the therapeutic power of green spaces and gardens. I had no idea that in 1673, when London’s Chelsea Physic Garden was established by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, within a walled four acre plot close to the River Thames, the healing power of plants was not merely acknowledged but established as an intrinsic part of life. Gardens were viewed as restorative and contemplative spaces. In truth, in the seventeenth century Britain was chiefly an agricultural and rural society and though many did not own, or have access, to a beautiful garden, the green and open countryside was on the doorstep, as it were, of the majority of citizens who, unknowingly, reaped the benefits.

In Thomas Bewick’s Memoir, he begins Chapter 2 thus:

“From the little Window at my Bed head, I noticed all the varying seasons of the year and when the Spring put in, I felt charmed at the music of Birds, which strained their little throats to proclaim it.”

The boy who would become the famous artist-engraver, was born in August 1753,and lived in Cherry-burn House near the small Village or Hamlet of Eltringham in the Newcastle area. Though his talent was prodigious, his early life was spent almost entirely in ordinary, every day pursuits in the nearby countryside which he loved and which helped to form him, as it did his friends and family. His series of superb wood engravings for his two major works of natural history: General History of Quadrupeds and History of British Birds were considered to have aroused a huge contemporary popular interest in natural history. Thomas’s love of, and absorption in, the natural world was unconscious but central to his youthful experience and growth. One would like to think that this immersion in the great, green outdoors fed his growing creativity.

 Thomas Bewick 1753-1828

Gardens can transport a person and revive the psyche. I derive great pleasure from working on my terrace, which is really a garden in miniature; from the searching for plants; the actual planting and placing; the changing of mind and position of pots; the watering and dead-heading; the evening stroll around my tiny estate and the blessed sitting out there in the sun or shade, to read or write. A plus for me now is that a terrace asks for much less physical effort, which is a blessing in fact! But the amount of calmness derived and the aesthetic beauty inhaled, the silent delight in just being there, do not depend on size and effort in the upkeep; just the walled green space, presently be-floralled and perfect, is enough.

 Bewick illustrating the extreme contentment
of immersion in a green space. Albeit with
the added charms of tobacco and beer.

The benefits of green spaces are increasingly recognised in the provision of therapeutic gardens attached to hospices and specialist care centres. I read last year, I think, of Horatio’s Garden Charity which creates and nurtures green sanctuaries chiefly in N.H.S. spinal-injury centres, to improve the psychological health of patients who may spend months in hospital. These life-affirming gardens are in memory of Horatio

 Horatio Chapple

Chapple whose idea it originally was. Horatio, who wanted to become a doctor, volunteered to work in 2010/11 in Salisbury Hospital where his father, David, is a spinal surgeon in the Duke of Cornwall Spinal Treatment Centre. Horatio asked why there was no outside green space for long-term patients to enjoy. In discussion with his father, Horatio came up with the idea of a therapeutic garden and he designed a questionnaire to discover exactly what patients wanted. Tragically, Horatio (17) was killed the following year, by a polar bear on a school expedition and this prompted a flood of donations to establish what came to be called Horatio’s Garden, designed by Cleve West, a notable, award-winning garden designer, at Salisbury Hospital. Salisbury has proven to be the first of a series of Horatio’s Gardens attached chiefly to spinal injury treatment centres throughout the country. The unbearable poignancy of this story, nonetheless, illustrates at least, the considerable achievement in the splendid realisation of therapeutic gardens available to an increasing number of spinal treatment patients with huge benefits for them. A powerful memorial fitting for a young man of empathy and vision.

 Horatio's Garden, London

Ennio Morricone. Nov 10th 1928-July 6th 2020

 Morricone at Cannes, 2012.

Such a sadness yesterday when I heard the news that Ennio Morricone had died. In fact, sheer gratitude and delight are what I normally, formerly, felt at the sound of his name. He was not a classical musician, orchestrator or composer in the way of the greats in the past, like Beethoven or Mozart but he was worthy of equal adoration and renown and many classical musicians were ardent admirers of his work. His fame was world-wide and inspired a huge devotion in the world of film/cinema, theatre, radio. I do wonder if, in fact, young people have even heard his name? Probably not but all anyone needs to do is just go on Wikipedia with an hour to spare to read all the biographical information available, and familiar names associated in particular with the film world, will bubble up and some recognition take place.

 Goffredo Petrassi, composer and teacher.

Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone 1973

Morricone, born in Rome, attended the Conservatory there from the age of 12 and studied trumpet, composition and choral music under the tutelage of Goffredo Petrassi. His instruments became the trumpet and the piano. He was a total musician eventually becoming world famous for his distinctive, manifold compositions, creating highly poignant, melodic and emotional music. Friends observed that he did not sit at the piano to compose but that entire compositions arrived, finished, in his head. His fame burst into the wider public in 1964 after Sergio Leone, the Italian film producer and early fellow student,, appointed him to write the score for the first of his Spaghetti Westerns, A Fistful of Dollars, The great success of this film spawned two more by Leone, A Few Dollars More, 1965 and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, 1966. All three so-called Dollars Trilogy starred Clint Eastwood and relied on Morricone for his highly individual, memorable scores. For Leone, the music was not background; it was integral to setting the mood, establishing the character, heightening the tension, calming the clamour. On 14 August 1968 Morricone was awarded a Golden Record for over 500,000 copies sold in the U.S. alone. The U.S. was an important market for Morricone but, in keeping with his refusal to learn English, he always resisted Hollywood and cared little for his standing in America, preferring to spend his life based in his beloved Rome. He subsequently composed the music for Leone’s Once Upon A Time in The West, 1968, and A Fistful of Dynamite in 1971. A stunningly fertile partnership.

Ennio and Sergio at school together, 1937.

"Most of the time, people experience the music in a film as a subconscious suggestion. In other words, music manages to show what is not visible, to work against the dialogue or, even more, tell a story that the images do not reveal." Morricone wrote in 2019.

I n fact, though Morricone won huge fame and prestige through his Spaghetti Western compositions, he composed for a wide variety of film including horror films and comedies plus, for example, my all-time favourite film, Cinema Paradiso. Oh, those swelling heartstrings! His repertoire of over 500 scores captivated countless listeners with its emotional fascination. He was also prolific in the number of concerts he gave. Certainly, when no longer young, in 2001 alone, he gave 250 concerts during a world tour with Orchestra Roma Sinfonietta. His 75^th birthday concert was at the Barbican, in London. During 2003-2004, Morricone appeared in concert in Paris, Vienna, Tokyo, Munich but I saw him in April or May 2005 when he appeared in Firenze before a crowd of at least 2000. I happened to be living there [and almost ready to leave that June] and couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the poster! The concert was one of the high spots of my life!

 Ennio Morricone with his only Oscar, at 87
in 2016!

 Clint Eastwood in
The Man With No Name.

When one reads of all that Morricone did and achieved in his 91 years, one is overwhelmed, almost, with admiration. He seems to have possessed enough energy and creativity for several men, and the music which remains as testament to genius, is sublime.

Chocostory and the Friet Museum

 Huis de Croone before the major
restoration 1978-1984,
The main entrance was to the left
of the facade.

On the corner of Sint Jansplein and Wijnzakstraat, there is an absolutely beautiful building. The Huis de Croone, a former wine tavern in what was the wine-trading district of mediaeval Brugge, is a Gothic building from the second half of the fifteenth century. After hundreds of years as a wine tavern, it became a place to buy patisserie for a long time and in the twentieth century it was variously the H.Q. of the Employment Exchange; a police training school; the Credit Communal de Belgique; and the VDAB, the Flemish Employment Bureau. Now it is a Museum telling the story of Chocolate and there is also Lumina Domestica, a splendid collection of lamps in one part of the building.

 Madonna and child, Huis de Croone.

Built probably around 1480, it has had major alterations at several points in its history. In 1830, for instance, the lower windows were further lowered and the cross frames replaced. In 1967/8 there was a major historic restoration by the then owners, Gemeentekrediet, when the lowered windows were restored to their original position and many missing corbels, consoles and wall studs were inserted. Below the front four bays is a two-aisled cellar, and a basement below the back house, with barrel vaulting plus a Gothic fireplace. Fernand Bonneure describes the house thus: ”This typical high brick gabled house with numerous windows in flawless bays illustrates the splendour with which the houses in Bruges used to be built and looked after.” Certainly, normally as one passes by, it is the perfect elegance of the Huis de Croone which catches the eye and delights. It is one of the most distinguished buildings in an urban landscape of special buildings. And I must admit that I always wonder if the most appropriate use for such a special building of such venerable age and quality, is to house a chocolate museum.

 Huis de Croone in its present glory.

The former Genoese Embassy;
Saaihalle; and now the
Friet Museum.

Continuing my prejudiced outlook, my mind leaps effortlessly to the Friet Museum on Vlamingstraat, owned by the same Van Belle family as the Chocolate Museum, and apparently, and mysteriously, very popular indeed with tourists. In one of those uncanny connections that life occasionally presents, this museum, too, is housed in one of the most gorgeous and special mediaeval buildings in Brugge. In former times it was the House of the Genoese, reminding of the trade between Brugge and Genoa from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. Genoese traders settled in Brugge from around 1375, selling spices, silver, gold and precious stones and buying cloth, yarn and grain. The volume of trade quickly grew and in 1395, Philip the Good negotiated a treaty transferring the Genoese commercial centre from London to Bruges and that was the year that the present building became the virtual Genoese embassy. Goods were stored, and marketed from, here while, from 1411, the Genoese Consul lived nearby in a purpose-built house in Grauwerkersstraat. This successful arrangement continued until 1516 when the Genoese hanse, together with those of Florence and Lucca, left Brugge to settle in Antwerp as the commercial viability, and consequent importance of Brugge began their long decline. With the silting up of the passage to the sea, Brugge ceased to be the great market of Western Europe and gradually began the long decline into relative poverty and picturesque commercial insignificance.

St George on the facade of the museum, housed in a building
which is a masterpiece of Brugge, to be treasured.

From 1558, the exquisite building became the Saaihalle where white wool was traded, a very successful commercial industry begun by fugitive weavers fleeing the French Flemish city of Hondschoote because of religious persecution. This use of the building gradually ceased towards the middle of the 18^th century after which it served a variety of uses including as a pub, a shop, a dance hall, a Seemanshaus during WW1 and a brothel for German soldiers. Later, after WW2, it became a cinema, the Coliseum. From 1978 to 1984, Luc Vermeersch directed a much-needed restoration for the badly-neglected old building and the Generale Bankmaatschappij turned the place into a prestigious meeting place for seminars, lectures, receptions and exhibitions. It has housed the Friet Museum since 2008. Again, one feels it would be wonderful to have this historic building with its exceptional facade, in use for public events like lectures, exhibitions etc.

The Plague by Albert Camus

Lockdown is beginning to creep away leaving a certain reluctance to throw oneself too ardently into former activities, despite longing to do so. This week, we are trying to reinstate Mahjong on my terrace and hopes are high! An attempt to re-start our Thursday evening get-togethers at Oud Huis Amsterdam has been thwarted owing to the immoveable barrier of the closure of the hotel which had been briefly open.

 Oud Huis Amsterdam, Genthof 4.

Boris, recently. 

A lovely idea that I have thought of, to visit Britain and go to see my sister on our birthday in late July, has caused me quite unexpected anxiety about the big effort neded to travel by train from Brugge to Bury St Edmonds. A considerable journey of at least 6-7 hours in a wretched mask amid other travellers, in a country (the U.K.) which has not so far been very successful at managing Covid 19. Incidentally I read a lovely little thumbnail of Boris by Christine Burns, a trans campaigner and author. “Johnson is a Pound Shop Trump, slightly more acceptable and less utterly crass.” Which rather cleverly manages to be rude about both men and cheered me up considerably!

I am currently reading The Plague by Albert Camus, published in 1947, thus, I discover, joining tens of thousands of locked-down readers during this Corona period, all fascinated by what seems to have become the defining book of Covid19. Camus “uses a biological epidemic to illustrate the dilemmas of moral contagion.” [Tony Judt. 2001] It is the story of a dreadful plague of rats in the fictional town of Oran in French Algeria when rats emerge from the sewers in their thousands to die with bulboes bursting. Soon humans are similarly affected and eventually, after disbelief in pestilences [“they only happen in history”] causes uncomprehending, comfortable stasis and scepticism, the enormity of what is happening hits home. The numbers afflicted rise; first slowly then exponentially and by time the plague-arriving Spring gives way to a sweltering summer, over 100 deaths a day are occurring. The New Normal governs lives. Emergency measures are rushed in; city gates and the commercial harbour are closed; sporting activities and beach bathing are prohibited. Food shortages emerge and rationing for basics is introduced. Plague profiteers prey on desperation and bewilderment; sufferers are isolated; entire suburbs are locked down; hospitals become overwhelmed and schools and other public buildings are converted into makeshift hospitals.

Part of the plague of Nazism

Mosque in Biskra in Algiers, similar
to the fictional Oban of the novel

Camus meditates tellingly on the psychological and social effects of the epidemic on the townspeople. A plague makes exiles of people in their own towns and homes; separation, isolation, anxiety, boredom and a quotidian claustrophobic repetition become their shared fate, seemingly without end to the sufferers. The living cannot even bid farewell to their dead. Camus’s plague is also a metaphor; when it was written, the plague was Nazism which had taken over and destroyed millions in unimaginable distortions of normal human behaviour. A character in the book, Tarrou, identifies the plague with people’s propensity to rationalise killing others for religious, philosophical or ideological causes. And it is in this sense of plague that the closing words of the novel observe:

 Camus, 1972

“..that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and enlightenment of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.”

But Camus’s narrator concludes, after the unaccountable dissipation of the plague when quarantine is lifted, gates open and families and lovers are reunited, that, in spite of all the horrors he has witnessed, “there are more things to admire in men than to despise.” He goes on to suggest that it is in ordinary virtue with people doing what they can for each other in the face of adversity, that extraordinary things happen to protect people from the worst depredations heaped on them by epidemics, whether from 'natural' causes or tyrannical governments or ideologies.. "There's no question of heroism in all this. It's a matter of common decency."

The apparent prescience of The Plague considered in today’s pandemic seems extraordinary. Camus describes so exactly our present situation: our fears, our mystification, our boredom, our longing for normalcy to return. He illustrates the moral dilemmas faced by humanity when in the throes of a plague and the range of human behaviours in response. But when it was published, the plague was recognised as Nazism and its attendant evils and Camus was widely recognised as a genius and awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. It remains one of the most important books ever written.

 Triumphant post script. Mahjong this morning!

Celebrations

 At the height of his powers

Eddie Merckx in the 1981 Giro d'Italia

By chance, I noticed that, yesterday, Wednesday 17 June was the 75^th birthday of Eddie Merckx. Not being a sports fan of any description, not Belgian and certainly knowing nothing of competitive cycling, even I am familiar with the name Eddie Merckx from the past. Always referred to in glowing terms as the greatest competitive cyclist in the world ever, his fame was as huge as his talent and his name still causes respect and recognition.

Around the beginning of his fame.

The more mature Eddie. 

Edouard Louis Joseph Merckx was born in Meensel-Kiezegem, Brabant on 17 June 1945 as the world was shuddering to a halt from the Second World War. In his long career, beginning in 1961 and ending on his retirement on 18 May1978, he won countless major races like the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a Espana. In fact he became a world-beater in both spheres of cycling competition; both in the Grand Tours and in the one day Classics, demonstrating both strength and speed; equally capable of final bursts of energy and speed, and the necessary endurance to keep up the winning pace for days. He was driven to succeed and, after retirement, was most successful in coaching the Belgian national team for eleven years, until 1996.

He has been garlanded with honours during his life, though perhaps the chief one to savour was when King Albert 11 bestowed the title of Baron on him in 1996. Sarkozy made him Commandeur de la Legion d’Honneur in 2011 while Italy made him a Cavaliere and Pope John Paul blessed Eddie in Brussels in the 1990s. He has experienced health problems during recent years: in 2013 he had a pacemaker fitted for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and was hospitalised on October 13 2019 after suffering a haemorrhage and falling, unconscious, from a cycle while riding.

So glad that I noticed the birthday item in the BBC News; I feel I have always known and respected the name Eddie Merckx but never knew anything much about him. My blog actually, incidentally, expands my knowledge little by little, even as I have to work harder to remember stuff!!

Lockdown here continues in a relaxed form so that cautious socialising has begun!! The blackbird, aka, MY blackbird, came back after a sad two day cessation of music for me, and frankly, the soundtrack of my social distancing and staying home alone, has been the sweet melodious outpouring from this exquisite feathered musician who visits my terrace regularly and frequently, every day. It may be the musing of a self-centred soul but it does feel like a daily gift!

I did begin with a birthday so will end by noting two. Today, that of my elder daughter in California, celebrating last evening to coincide with Father's Day when there was leisure enough from the straitjacket of Working From Home. And tomorrow, the 19th birthday of my middle grand-daughter. Not now aware of celebrations allowed in the U.K. but hope rides high!

Noticing Small Things

Artistic former window above Vervesdijk.

Lovely modern frontage with superb
Art Deco? window, top left.

 It seems to be a common feature of experience in Lock-down Times, that people are noticing, or celebrating, relatively small things, or previously unnoticed minor details, as life’s tempo has slowed. In that vast group of Seeing Features Normally Unseen, have come for me some beautiful touches of Brugge which I have been able to appreciate, often for the first time. Here are visual proofs of a late-onset ability to notice more, to be more alert to, delightful little features of the cityscape around me.

Part of the beautiful remaining 13th century walls of Brugge.
View from Pottenmakersstraat across the Augustijnenrei .

A

Above the heads of passers-by on Langestraat.
Think they used to be coloured; now a chic black.

On Steenstraat, beautifying a fairly ordinary
brick building above a shop.

Dancing girl beneath the trees
along the Coupure.

In Flanders' fields the poppies grow ....

Added because it is the most 'solid' reflection I have 
ever seen in a canal. Carmerbrug in distant centre
taken facing the corner of Spiegelrei.

Artistic former window on Vervesdijk

Fernand Edmond Jean Marie Khnopff 1858-1921

I advertised in a local online neighbourhood journal to see if I could find anyone, with a garden, willing to host four lovely Hellebores until mid-Autumn. I had been given three super specimens as a present by a visiting Dutch friend in January, to add to the single one my terrace already boasted. All four have given an amazing and prolonged flowering during the winter months but, a terrace is not quite a garden, and I needed the room while the plants died off to re-regroup next Winter. Astonishingly, a lovely couple immediately contacted me and the plants left yesterday for their new home in someone else’s garden. Chatting about art to the ‘hosts’, I discovered the name of Fernand Khnopff, a Symbolist artist born to a wealthy bourgeois family in Grimbergen, in Flanders, in 1858. The reason his name was mentioned was because one of his Bruges paintings, The Abandoned City, was based on the architecture of Woensdagmarkt where I live. I was so intrigued and as soon as I could, I trawled for information online. I was quite unprepared to discover so much about a cult figure of early 1900s art of whom I had never heard. The older one grows, the more infinite becomes the depth of ignorance.

Fernand Edmond Khnopff
Belgian Symbolist Painter
1858-1921

The Abandoned City
Based on the architecture of Woensdagmarkt.

In his early childhood, in 1859, Fernand Edmond Jean Marie Khnopff moved to live in Brugge when

his father was appointed Substitut Du Procureur Du Roi, before leaving for Brussels in 1864. Clearly, the architecture and atmosphere imbibed during his early childhood, of the mediaeval city of Bruges surfaced to play a notable role in his later artistic work. During his period studying Law at the Free University of Brussels, he developed a passion for literature, discovering the works of Baudelaire, Flaubert, and other French authors and with his brother Georges, he joined Jeune Belgique, a group of young writers including Max Waller, Georges Rodenbach, Iwain Gilkin and Emile Verhaeren.

Emile Verhaeren

Eventually, the young Fernand dropped out of Law School and enrolled at the Cours De Dessin Apres Nature at the Academie Royale des Beaux Arts in Brussels where a contemporary student, destined to become famous, was James Ensor. [The two met but did not admire each other and, in later life, became rivals.] During trips to Paris between 1877 and 1880, Khnopff discovered the works of Delacroix, Ingres, Moreau and Stevens and at the Paris World Fair of 1878 he became acquainted with the oeuvre of Millais and Burne-Jones, notable Pre-Raphaelites.

Marguerite Khnopff, Fernand's
sister and muse.

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.

His first work was exhibited at the Salon de L’Essor in Brussels in 1881 and the critics’ reaction was harsh except for that of Emile Verhaeren who wrote approvingly of his art and became a life-long supporter. In 1883 Khnopff was one of the founding members of the Groupe des XX and exhibited at the annual Salon organised by Les XX. In 1885 he met the French writer, Josephin Peladan, who asked him to design the cover for his new novel, Le Vice Supreme, but the cover Khnopff created offended an eminent soprano, Rose Caron, who thought that the imaginary character he portrayed, libelled her. The vehemence of her reaction caused a sensational controversy, amplified in the French and Belgian press, inadvertently publicising his work and establishing him more securely in the public eye. Khnopff eventually destroyed the offending work, but continued to be invited by Peladan to design illustrations for his work.

Jeanne Kefer
An early portrait in 1885 showing Khnopff's ability
to mix visual realism with feelings of vulnerability
and silence.

In 1889 Khnopff had his first contacts with Britain where he often subsequently stayed and exhibited. Gradually he met all the important British artists like Watt, Hunt, Rossetti, Morris and Burne-Jones and from 1895 he worked as correspondent for the British art journal, The Studio, reporting about the artistic developments in Belgium and in Europe generally, and producing the rubric, Studio-Talks-Brussels. He also wrote and lectured on the British Arts and Crafts pioneers such as William Morris and Walter Crane whom he greatly admired. In 1898 he presented a selection of 21 works in the first exhibition of the Vienna Secession where his work was rapturously received. His work in Vienna became an important influence on the work of Gustave Klimt, one of the founder members of the Vienna Secession which was an art movement formed in 1897, of Austrian painters, graphic artists, sculptors and architects, closely related in style to Art Nouveau.

From 1900 Khnopff was absorbed in the building of his new home and studio in Brussels [sadly, since demolished] The design was inspired by the Vienna Secession movement, particularly by the architecture of Joseph Maria Olbrich, and Khnopff added highly symbolic, decorative concepts to turn the house and studio into a temple where his artistic genius could flourish; it was also a private tribute to avant-garde Symbolist art. His motto, On a que soi [One has but oneself] was inscribed above the main entrance and his passion for the theatre was demonstrated in his studio where a golden circle set in a white mosaic floor, marked the spot where he stood to paint. At the same time, he became actively involved in theatre designs and in 1903 he sketched the sets for a production of Le Mirage by Georges Rodenbach, directed by Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theatre in Berlin. The sets, greatly appreciated by the German audiences, evoked the gloomy, mysterious streets of Brugge where he had spent his very early childhood.

Palais Stoclet
now a World Heritage Site.

Also in 1903 Khnopff designed both costumes and sets for the World premiere of Ernest Chausson’s opera, Le Roi Arthus at the Theatre Royale de la Monnaie in Brussels and the scene was set for the following decade of theatre design for Fernand and even wider international fame. In 1904 the city council of Saint Gilles commissioned him to design the ceilings of the Salle de Marriages in the new Town Hall and simultaneously, Adophe Stoclet, a wealthy banker chose him to produce the decorative panels for the music room of the Palais Stoclet. Famous Vienna Secession architect, Josef Hoffmann, designed the Palais and Gustav Klimt, the decorative mosaic in the dining room. A happy reunion of some of the important Vienna Secession artists and an acknowledgement of the cult status of Khnopff by this time.

Fernand Khnopff was elected a member of the Classe des Beaux-Arts of the Académie Royale de Belgique in 1907, and contributed motions and articles to their Bulletin from 1912-1920. Publication of this journal was interrupted during WWI, but a supplement published in 1919 included numerous works written between 1915-18. Among them is a passionate argument for artistic reparations for the damage caused to Belgian cities by the German occupation, including the return of the missing panels from the Ghent Altarpiece from the Berlin Museum. During the war, he taught painting classes, wrote and continued to create. His last published article was in 1921 on the works of art inspired by Dante, tracing the artistic representation of the major texts of the Italian writer by artists from Botticelli to Rodin. This gave him ample opportunity to praise one of the British Pre-Raphaelites whom he most admired, Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

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