The third great gem of Tournai, little known outside of Belgium, is small but select. It is distinguished almost as much by the building in which it is housed, a new-Greek masterpiece designed in 1928 by the great Belgian architect of art nouveau, Victor Horta. Built of giant, white, stone blocks in the Courtyard to the immediate left of the Tournai Town Hall (a 500-yard walk to the south of the Grand' Place, on the Rue Saint-Martin), it softly curves and undulates, in the style of this under-appreciated master, and is illustrated inside almost entirely by natural light flooding through ingenious glass apertures and panes. Horta was selected for the building by the skilled Belgian art collector, Henri van Cutsem, of Brussels, whose collection forms the heart of this museum limited to 700 pieces.

Forty works, filling one of the five basic exhibition rooms, are by Tournai-born (1810-1887) Louis Gallait, whose large and painstakingly realistic tableaux—almost in the style of a Flemish primitive!—are a veritable and extremely dramatic history course in the origins of the revolt of the Netherlands against Philip II of Spain: the panoramic Abdication of Charles V, Reading of the Death Sentence to the Counts of Egmont and Home, Last Moments of the Count of Egmont, the particularly masterful Last Honors Rendered to the Counts of Egmont and Home. And then, among many portraits, is a work of deep affection and genius inscribed to his best friend, a pensive, human Colonel Hallart portrayed with double chins and unruly hair.

One noted ancient painting is the ravishing Virgin and Child by another Tournai-born (1400-1464) artist who went on to found a celebrated school for the Flemish primitives further north, the great Roger de la Pasture, as he is called here, but better known in the Dutch as Rogier van der Weyden. In this enthralling masterpiece, Mary is shown offering her breast to the Infant as a mother would, protruding the nipple with her forefinger and middle finger as all of us have seen new mothers do. And then there are two often-reproduced works of the French impressionist, Edouard Manet (1832-1883): Chez la Pere Lathuille (though painted in 1879, we have all seen that mildly-reproving French waiter in the background, undoubtedly in his current reincarnation, during our own, late-20th-century trips to France) and Argenteuil. Add, in alphabetical order, Bruegel the Younger's Hunters in the Snow; five works by the immensely accomplished Henri de Braekeleer (1840-1888); Charles Degroux' (1825-1870) Pilgrimage to Dieghem; Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641, two pieces); James Ensor (1860-1949, two pieces); Jean Gossan's (1472-1531) Saint-Donatien, another much-acclaimed masterwork of a "Primitive"; Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678); Robert Campin (born 1378 in France, died 1444 in Tour-nai), the probable "Master of Flemalle", and perhaps the greatest of the Tournai painters; Bernard van Orley (1488-1541); a tiny but masterful Rubens sketch and larger painting; Georges Seurat's (1859-1891) pointillist Shore at Honfleur, Joseph Stevens (1832-1892); Theodore Verstraete's (1851-1907) Funeral at Campines and several other fine works; and many other mainly-Belgian painters of the 15th through 19th centuries. As you will note, the museum displays no 20th-century paintings (as yet), and that limitation, avoiding the clashing departures and styles of our own day, makes the museum's collection even more pleasant to peruse and comprehend. You will have an enjoyable, two-hour interlude at this surprising institution which retains the tone and flavor of a private collection.