Wednesday, April 17, 2013

The Wednesday Post


Greetings from Dieric Bouts
Appreciate the man.

Dieric or Dirk Bouts was a "Netherlandish" painter, sure, but he lived and worked in Louvain.  After the 80 Years' War, or after the break-up of the post-Napoleonic United Kingdom of the Netherlands if you prefer, Louvain became less Netherlandish and rather more... Belgian.


Hence, Dieric "Dirk" Bouts has a strong claim to the title of "Belgium's famous painter."


...and he has been featured in the postage of his more-or-less native land a number of times.


So is he a mere local talent?  The Upper Voltans thought not, back before they became Burkinans Faso.


And the people of Benin certainly thought not in 1973, very shortly after they had ceased to be the people of Dahomey.


...and he is huge in the Cook Islands.


Dieric Bouts left the Infinite Art Tournament last weekend with a overall record of 1-2-0 and a cumulative total of 14 votes for and 19 against.

1 comment:

DrSchnell said...

I love those old stamps when, instead of just printing more stamps, they crossed out old names or denominations, and just stamped the new ones on top. Nope, not Dahomey anymore! It's kind of like if, after the Revolution, we started flying Union Jacks with a big black X on them, and "USA! USA! USA!" scribbled over the top. I've got some German stamps from the interwar period where inflation was so bad that they had to continually print new denominations on old stamps, because by the time they got printed, they were obsolete.