The Emile Van Doren Museum in Genk houses amid the original interior of Villa Le Coin Perdu a large collection of landscape paintings by the Brussels artist Emile Van Doren (1865-1949) and other landscape painters of the so-called Genk School are counted.
The Muesum
The story of the Emile Van Doren Museum begins in 1913, when Emile Van Doren and his wife Cidonie Raikem, who at that time still ran the Hôtel des Artistes in the center of Genk, built a villa just outside the center of Genk. The villa in English cottage style , possibly after a design by architect Adrien Blomme (1878–1940), overlooked Genk’s Molenvijvers – a view that has been immortalized on many of Van Doren’s canvases. The villa was appropriately named ‚Le Coin Perdu‘. Van Doren would continue to live and work on the Verloren Kostweg (now Henri Decleenestraat) until his death in 1949.
In 1956, on the death of Fanny Van Doren, his only daughter, the villa and its entire contents came into the hands of the city of Genk. In her will, Fanny expressly expressed the wish that her father’s villa should be given a cultural destination. In 1976 the villa was inaugurated as Stedelijk Museum and Cultuurhuis Emile Van Doren, which is still the case today. The museum houses a considerable collection of paintings by the master of the Campine landscape . The former house is furnished with the original furniture of the landscape painter. The studio can also be visited, with a number of unfinished canvases still on the easel.
The museum tells the surprising story of the old Genck , where landscape painters fell in love with the mirroring ponds and rolling heaths since the mid-nineteenth century. Numerous landscape paintings, in the authentic setting of an artist’s home, show an unseen beautiful and green Genk from a hundred years ago. The landscape painters who visited Genk from the mid-1840s are often collected under the name of the Genk School .
The museum not only tells the story of Emile Van Doren, but also shows works by, among others, Joseph Coosemans (1828–1904), Edmond De Schampheleer (1824–1899), Alphonse Asselbergs (1839–1916), Léon Becker (1826–1909) ), Isidore Verheyden (1846–1905), François Roffiaen (1820–1898), François-Joseph Halkett (1856–1921), Ludovic Janssen (1888–1954), Emile Van Doren (1865–1949), Herman Richir (1866– 1942), Alfons De Clercq (1868–1945), Edmond Verstraeten (1870–1956), Armand Maclot (1877–1959),Joseph De Mey (1873–1903), Florimond van Caillie , Charles Wellens (1889–1958), Elinor Barnard (1872–1949), and Willy Minders (1913–77).
Inspired by the historical story of the artists‘ resort that Genk was in the period 1840–1940, the Emile Van Doren Museum undertakes the search for the meaning of landscape and art today, including in their residency activities. The current landscape of Genk, both the greenest city center and the third industrial city in Flanders, and the surrounding region forms the basis for this.
The museum varies regularly in its permanent display and the temporary exhibitions deepen the story of the museum and the landscape painting tradition of Genk in the period 1840–1940.
The museum is open every Sunday (except public holidays) or by appointment. Entrance is free.
