The Austrian Netherlands
In the 18th century the southern Netherlands were a quiet province of the Habsburg empire. Art lived on in churches, academies and crafts, until the French Revolution and Neoclassicism transformed the country.
After the War of the Spanish Succession the southern Netherlands passed to Austria in 1714. The country was prosperous but lacked the great patrons of the past, and Antwerp remained cut off from the sea. Artists worked in the shadow of Rubens, and painting kept to the Flemish tradition of altarpieces, portraits and decoration.
The most original art was in the churches. Carved oak pulpits, around which whole landscapes, trees and figures grow up, became a Flemish speciality. The sculptor Laurent Delvaux, born in Ghent and later based in Nivelles, had worked in London and Rome and gave sculpture a new classical elegance, and Pieter Jozef Verhaghen in Leuven became one of the last great Flemish Baroque painters.
Towards the end of the century Neoclassicism arrived, with the Place Royale in Brussels and the palace at Laeken. After the revolutions in Brabant and Liège the country was annexed by France in 1795, and many works of art were taken to Paris. Under the United Kingdom of the Netherlands after 1815, Jacques-Louis David lived in exile in Brussels and had pupils such as François-Joseph Navez.