Can a museum-shop worker’s favourite bring Brussels artist Germaine Rimbout back into view?

Paternot told BRUZZ that she had followed the relatively little-known Brussels artist for years and was delighted when an entire room devoted to her work opened. Her favourite piece is associated with the circus and a melancholy clown, whose expressive appearance Paternot reads as an invitation to show emotions more openly. That is a personal interpretation rather than the museum’s definitive account, but it offers an accessible route into drawings that can otherwise appear formally complex.

The museum’s presentation, “Germaine Rimbout: Poetry, Colour, Movement”, places that emotional response inside a longer artistic development. According to the official multilingual visitor guide produced by RMFAB, Rimbout worked almost exclusively on paper. Early landscapes, portraits and group scenes gradually gave way to more abstract arrangements in which bodies, lines and contrasting colours generate movement.

Paternot’s choice also draws attention to the people who shape a museum visit beyond its curators. She works in the institution’s shop and art-book store, handling deliveries, stock and orders. BRUZZ reports that visitors sometimes ask about Rimbout after seeing the room, although dedicated publications about the artist remain scarce. The shop therefore becomes part of the encounter: it is where curiosity about a rediscovered name meets the gaps that still exist in art publishing and scholarship.

Rimbout was born in 1894 in Sint-Joost-ten-Node, today one of the Brussels-Capital Region’s 19 municipalities — a gemeente in Dutch and commune in French. The museum’s guide says that she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, worked in education and taught drawing. She was interested in music and poetry, encountered Japanese printmaking and applied ideas drawn from Eugène Chevreul’s colour theory. Cubism and Fauvism influenced her early visual language, while her post-war work moved towards freer, multicoloured abstraction.

A decisive relationship began in 1923, when Rimbout volunteered for the Braille League and met Cécile Douard, an artist who had lost her sight. According to RMFAB’s archival research, Douard introduced her to painting, printmaking and sculpture and helped her gain access to classes in Alfred Bastien’s studio. The pair travelled in Belgium, France, Italy and Algeria, sharing an interest in literature as well as visual art. Rimbout repeatedly portrayed Douard and later wrote about their life together.

The deaths of Douard in 1941 and of Rimbout’s parents in 1942 and 1943 marked a rupture. After a successful show at Brussels’ Galerie de la Toison d’Or in 1944, Rimbout left teaching to concentrate on art. She subsequently spent time in Paris and worked at the Académie Julian between 1947 and 1951, the museum says. Her later watercolours transformed studies of the human figure through abstract patterns and complementary colours.

Rimbout died in 1973. She left hundreds of drawings to RMFAB and the Royal Library of Belgium, or KBR

Organisation

KBR

Belgium’s Royal Library, which preserves Rimbout drawings and related archival material.

Why it matters

Belgium’s Royal Library, which preserves Rimbout drawings and related archival material.

About

The Royal Library of Belgium is the national library of Belgium. The institution owns several collections of historical importance, like the Library of the Dukes of Burgundy, and is the depository for all books ever published in Belgium or abroad by Belgian authors.

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The Spilliaert Room was created for rotating displays of modern works on paper. RMFAB explains that these objects are fragile, so exhibition periods are limited and the lighting is deliberately subdued. That conservation requirement helps explain a familiar museum paradox: an institution may own hundreds of works by an artist while visitors rarely see them.

It also gives the exhibition broader significance. Museums and researchers seeking to correct historical imbalances can bring overlooked artists into public view, but wall space, conservation limits, cataloguing and research capacity determine whether that visibility lasts. Paternot frames Rimbout’s neglect primarily in terms of being a woman in a male-dominated art world. The museum uses more measured language, describing an artist who forged her own path in such an environment while also noting that she exhibited relatively little. These explanations can coexist: institutional bias, limited exposure and the fragility of works on paper may all have contributed.

The Old Masters Museum is at Rue de la Régence 3/Regentschapsstraat 3, 1000 Brussels, in the City of Brussels commune/gemeente near Place Royale/Koningsplein. RMFAB lists opening hours of 10:00 to 17:00 from Tuesday to Friday and 11:00 to 18:00 at weekends; Monday is the regular closing day, and ticket desks close 30 minutes before the museum. Because exceptional closures can change, visitors should check the institution’s official practical-information and ticket pages before travelling.

The Rimbout display is included with admission to the Old Masters Museum. Brussels Museums lists free admission from 13:00 on the first Wednesday of the month and says the Brussels Card is accepted, although visitors should verify conditions for their chosen date. Brussels-Central is the nearest major railway station, while metro lines 1 and 5 and trams 92 and 93 serve the wider museum district.

Belgium’s linguistic structure should not pose a serious barrier here. The federal museum communicates in Dutch and French, while the Rimbout visitor guide is also available in English. Names may consequently appear as Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique or Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium; all refer to the same federal institution. Likewise, Regentschapsstraat and Rue de la Régence are the Dutch and French names for the same street.

What happens after 18 October has not been announced in detail. BRUZZ says the light-sensitive works will return to storage, while the museum describes the Spilliaert Room as a rotating space. The remaining question is whether this focused presentation leads to further research, digitisation or a new publication capable of keeping Rimbout visible after the physical display disappears.