Genk Through the Eyes of a Painter: Landscape Painters in the Limburg Kempen 1850-1950

Swampy marshes and fens, vast heathlands and mirrored 'wijers' covered most of Genk before the discovery of coal in 1901. The unspoilt natural beauty attracted hundreds of landscape painters from home and abroad to the vast Kempen municipality from the second half of the nineteenth century. Together with Tervuren, Anseremme, Knokke and Kalmthout, Genk became one of the most beloved artist villages in the country.
Anna Boch, Emile Claus, Theo van Rysselberge, Joseph Coosemans, Emile Bernard, Alphonse Asselbergs and many others were welcome guests at the Hôtel de la Cloche, and later the Hôtel des Artistes. In the wake of the painters, writers such as Neel Doff, Prosper van Langendonck and Emile Verhaeren, botanists, archaeologists and hordes of tourists followed. The hotel industry boomed and Genk promoted itself as a 'green haven of peace' and 'land of dreams'.
Discover the forgotten and unique story of a Kempen farming village that grew from 1850 onwards into an artistic hotbed and a tourist attraction, before the coal industry would drive the painters away from the heath for good. Genk through painters' eyes is the book accompanying the exhibition of the same name.