Jules de Bruycker’s paintings of Ghent are full of life and vibrant action, showing the teeming life of the Flandrien city as it was in the early 20th century. There’s something going on wherever you look, like his fellow painters Pieter Bruegel and Hieronymus Bosch had portrayed centuries earlier. You can’t take your eyes off the scenes of everyday life.
Similarly, I can’t take my eyes off the colourful, chaotic action of the Classics, which begin this weekend with Omloop Nieuwsblad and Opening Weekend. The scenes which De Bruycker painted a century ago are close to where Omloop begins on Saturday; the race rolls out of ‘t Kuipke, metres away from MSK Gent, where a retrospective on the artist was held last March.
