3-011-966 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Bicentenary Festival of the Royal Academy of Antwerp: procession to the Cathedral of Notre Dame on Monday, August 22, 1864. '...a religious thanksgiving service, or Te Deum, was solemnly performed...This view was taken on the Place de Meir, which had been decorated for the occasion, after a design by M. Fischer, with two columns of crimson and gold, each surmounted by a Belgian lion, ornamented at the base and capital with gilt palm-leaves and encircled with coronets. A variety of flags and banners were ranged at intervals along the side of the street. Looking down this vista towards the superb canopy of the high altar, and to the statue of Teniers with the effigies of the other founders of the Antwerp Academy seated in a semicircle around him, the effect was very imposing...The annual Kermesse, or festival of the patron saint of the municipality, an occasion which is always celebrated with much pomp...was combined in this instance with the two-hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the Antwerp Royal Academy of Arts, and with the jubilee, or fiftieth yearly meeting, of the Royal Society of Harmony; besides which, an exhibition of the works of living artists was opened by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Art'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.