When we meet, he wears a china-blue double-breasted Van Noten suit and white distressed Church's loafers that match the slightly cartoonish white round-frame sunglasses he puts on later as we walk over to Van Noten's Antwerp store, where he often shows up unannounced.

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Born in Antwerp, Hals was apprenticed to Karel van Mander.

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In 2011, an article in the same journal from a team led by the University of Antwerp's Koen Janssens reported that a pigment Van Gogh favoured called chrome yellow degraded when other, chromium-containing pigments were present.

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Mr. Ackermann studied fashion at Antwerp's Royal Academy of Fine Arts, whose alumni include Dries Van Noten, Martin Margiela and Ann Demeulemeester.

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Ms. Demeulemeester graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp in 1981 with other soon-to-be-famous designers Dries Van Noten and Dirk Bikkembergs.

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Anthony Van Dyck, one of the finest portrait painters of the 17th Century, was born in Antwerp and became court artist for King Charles I in London in 1632.

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Speaking in near-perfect English, Louis explains how his mother, blacksmith's daughter Maria Christine Van Meir, was in her 20s and working in the family cafe in Berendrecht, north of Antwerp, when she helped the young Belgian, Paul Bouvet, in his attempt to get to Holland.

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