One of the most scandalous artists of the nineteenth century was born in Namur in 1833.
Félicien Rops was a gifted artist who shocked people with his erotic paintings of lecherous priests, Parisian prostitutes and women being molested by snakes. After his marriage broke up, he lived with two sisters in Paris.
Some of his most decadent works now hang in an elegant eighteenth-century town house in the heart of Namur once owned by Rops’ parents-in-law.
Established in 1964, the museum displays his paintings and engravings in a series of dark rooms. You discover everything from early caricatures to his late decadent works, along with more risqué works hidden away in drawers.
The museum occasionally organises exhibitions on Rops linking him to Symbolists such as James Ensor and Edvard Munch.
Derek Blyth’s hidden secret of the day: Derek Blyth is the author of the bestselling “The 500 Hidden Secrets of Belgium”. He picks out one of his favourite hidden secrets for The Brussels Times every day.
