Episode of the September Days 1830, on the Grand Place of Brussels

Belgium was barely four years old when this was unveiled. The young state had won its independence from the Dutch in the revolution of 1830, and around 1834 its government commissioned Wappers to put that moment on a wall-sized canvas. He chose the September days, when for the better part of a week Brussels fought street by street against the Dutch army. Look at the crowd and you'll see it's deliberately mixed, a gentleman in a dark coat beside a workman, a wounded fighter carried down, a boy with a flag, all pressed into one rising, pyramid-shaped mass. At the centre a man holds up the proclamation addressed to the citizens of Brussels. Wappers was the first Belgian painter to work in the new Romantic manner, and this canvas hangs in the country's royal museum in the city it shows.