Traveling to Ghent by train the pastoral landscape looked like something Bruegel would have painted six hundred years ago. Sheep grazed on grassy meadows with church spires poking above the tree line in the background. The only touch lacking that Bruegel might have brought to the scene were peasants toiling with farm tools on their sectioned off plots.
Not to fret. In Ghent the peasants were out in force, only 21st century style. They have money, schooling, and although they wouldn’t know which end of a plow to grab hold of it doesn’t matter because whatever they do it gives them plenty of time to relax and behave like Bruegel’s jocund village dwellers in festival mode. In the sixteenth-century there seems to have been a religious holiday every other week, so tourists lounging about in Ghent are just carrying on a grand tradition. Pick up a menu at any café and the first three pages will be list of drinks (at least two devoted to various beers) with meal offerings squeezing in a tiny paragraph on the back page.
Present day Bruegelund brings to mind a couple of painters who captured the spirit. Jan Steen whose painting we saw in Brussels, and Judith Leyster whose work we got to peruse today in Ghent.
