On July 16, 2013, thieves broke into the Van Buuren House and, in a little over 2 minutes, stole ten paintings and two drawings off the walls of the gorgeous Art Deco villa in the leafy Brussels suburb of Uccle. Formerly part of the personal collection of wealthy banker and art collector David van Buuren and his wife Alice, the stolen works included James Ensor’s Shrimps and Shells, and La Penseuse by Kees van Dongen valued at €1.2 million.
Other works that were stolen that night included a piece by Pieter Brueghel the Younger and a pencil drawing by Van Gogh, Peasant Woman Peeling Potatoes, considered to be a fake. It was a devastating loss for a museum that is all about the personal tastes and characters of David and Alice van Buuren. But the story didn’t end there. Two years later the museum that runs the house was in negotiations with the thieves to return the art.
It appears nothing came of those efforts – the version of La Penseuse in the house today is a photograph – which is a tragedy because those same artworks had faced far greater odds during the Second World War. The van Buuren’s were Jewish and were forced to flee Belgium in 1940 as the Nazis invaded and occupied the country. Before going into exile in the United States, they gave their art collection to their chauffeur for safe keeping.
Leaving your prized art collection with someone you only know because they drive you around seems a risk to me, but the van Buuren’s clearly knew their man. It’s said that the chauffeur hid them in his loft for the duration of the war. When David and Alice came back to Brussels in 1945, the entire collection was returned and once again hung from the walls of their house … and it is quite a house.
Tucked away in a quiet, nondescript, but well-to-do Brussels street, the red brick house with decorative masonry was built between 1924-28 in the Amsterdam School style of architecture (David van Buuren was Dutch). The exterior hides an interior that is full of luxurious Art Deco furnishings, beautiful stained glass windows, paintings and sculpture spanning centuries of art, dark wood paneling, and colourful tapestries and rugs.
In this setting the van Buuren’s entertained a host of rich and famous people, including Christian Dior, Coco Chanel, René Magritte and the Queen of Belgium. If the interiors are special the gardens are their equal. It’s clear that much love and attention went into creating a very personal garden. It has six ‘zones’, the most intriguing are the Labyrinth and the Garden of the Hearts, commissioned by Alice after her husband’s death.
We had an early booking, the weather was glorious and we decided to go into the garden first, where we pretty much had it to ourselves. In 2023, the gardens were included in the European Route of Historic Gardens, which the Council of Europe established in 2016. It aims to promote and protect the cultural heritage of historic gardens. It’s easy to see why the Van Buuren House made the cut. In the Labyrinth we even met the resident fox.
The gardens cover 26 acres and it’s easy to spend an hour strolling through the different zones. These evolved over time, the earliest parts include rose gardens close to the house designed by renowned Belgian landscape architect Jules Buyssens in 1924. Their geometrical shapes complemented the Art Deco house. The Labyrinth was designed in 1968 by another famous garden designer, René Pechère.
David van Buuren died in 1955 and in 1970 Alice decided to turn the house into a living memorial to their lives, she called it a ‘private memory house‘. The museum opened in 1973 after Alice died, but every inch of it still feels like the home that they shared. Only a small number of people are allowed to visit at a given time, which helps to make a visit feel intimate and unhurried. It’s a great place.
Notes from Camelid Country 
That is magnificent! Both house and gardens.
One of those very Brussels places, really lovely.