La Beguinage~ Antique Framed Oil on Canvas
2012-0737
(Click the Item No. for an inquiry)24 x 20 overall
Price: $498.00
Location : Baton Rouge
This fine impressionist work depicts a quaint beguinage and is set in its original frame, circa mid-1900s. A beguinage comprises a courtyard surrounded by small dwellings. It is often encircled by a wall and secluded from the town proper by one or two gates. Poor and elderly beguines were housed here by benefactors.
The first beguinages were set up in the 12th century in what has subsequently become the French speaking part of Belgium (Lige). Bguinages are to be found in an area roughly corresponding with present-day Northern and North-Eastern France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Western and North-Western Germany.
The beguines were a religious movement of women. Their success, according to the Belgian historian Henri Pirenne, was due to a surplus of women occasioned by violence, war, military and semi-military operations, which took the lives of many men. Great numbers of women had no option but to unite and collectively secure the aid of rich benefactors.
Circa early 1900s.
