‘Hoarded Treasures’: an Antwerp Art Collection Shapes Belgian Cultural Identity Abroad

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines how the relocation to America of an important collection of Flemish art in the mid-1790s (and its return to Antwerp some twenty years later) helped shape the owners’ identity, both in Belgium and America. Henri Joseph Stier (1743–1821), a direct descendant of Rubens, fled Antwerp with his family in June 1794, to avoid having the family’s priceless art collection fall into the hands of the French, who were impounding art treasures as military levy. After the family returned to Antwerp in 1803, the collection was left to the care of the Stiers’ youngest daughter, Rosalie Calvert, who had married an American plantation owner and remained in Maryland until her death in 1821. In 1816, Rosalie was finally able to send the collection back to Antwerp. Interestingly, this coincided with the return from France of many other Belgian paintings; a transfer in which Henri Stier and his son played important official roles, as art collectors and connoisseurs. The return of Belgian art treasures gave rise to a growing consciousness on the part of the Belgian people of their national culture and tradition.