Foggy sun in the morning by Nop Briex

About "Foggy sun in the morning"

by Nop Briex

About the artwork

Maastricht, the city of my ancestors, my studies at the Zuyd Art Academy. You can see here the Sint Servaas bridge and the Wyck suburb in oil paint. In the Maastricht language, the city name is: Mestreech /məsˈtʁeːç/; French, somewhat obsolete: Maestricht; Walloon: Måstraik or Li Trail) is a city and municipality in the south of the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of Limburg and has 120,837 inhabitants (Jan. 31, 2022, source: CBS). This makes it the largest municipality in the province of Limburg.

Maastricht originated at a ford in the Meuse River, from which it got its name (Maastricht = Mosa Trajectum = passage through the Meuse). Maastricht has been inhabited continuously for two thousand years. The city has a long and eventful history, to which the numerous historic buildings and art treasures in churches and museums testify. Internationally, the city gained great fame through the Maastricht Treaty (1992), which created the European Union in its present form and paved the way for the introduction of the euro as the European currency.

The city is often seen as "foreign" in the rest of the Netherlands, mainly because of its peripheral location close to Belgium and Germany, but also because of its atypical landscape, Maasland house construction, different history, complicated language situation, dominance of Catholicism (formerly more so than now), strong emphasis on community life (brass bands, carnival, processions) and alleged Burgundian lifestyle.