My Favourite Room

Palais Stoclet in Brussels, where I was born and lived for 15 years, is regarded as one of the most extraordinary houses ever built. It has been listed in several stages: exterior, interior, garden, and finally the furniture and silver. It was also listed by UNESCO. It has been called, ironically, a ‘gilded cage’.

My grandfather, Adolphe Stoclet, commissioned it in 1904. Having spent time in Vienna, he met all the artists of the Vienna Secession, among them Kokoschka, Klimt and Schiele, as well as Mahler and Secession architect Josef Hoffmann, whom he commissioned to build this stunning home.

The house, with its austere geometric forms, is on Avenue de Tervueren. My grandfather, being an heir to a considerable fortune, gave Hoffman carte blanche, which was highly irresponsible. Hoffmann even designed a dress for my grandmother, so she wouldn’t clash with the decor.

The crowning glory of the Palais are Gustav Klimt’s mosaic friezes in what became the large dining room. They are so elaborate that Klimt himself wrote a letter to Hoffmann saying the design was unrealistic, as it would be too expensive. I remember asking my grandfather, as we were going down the main stairway for lunch, how much the house cost. He just laughed. I don’t think he knew himself.

My father passed away when he was 33 and we stayed with my grandparents during my mother’s widowhood, which lasted 12 years. So every day we had lunch and dinner with my grandparents.

The large dining room with the Klimt friezes was only used at Christmas – with 20 or more around the table – and for special events. For day-to-day occasions, we ate in the little dining room, as it was called, which I much preferred. This was the most convivial room in the Palais.

It made me feel relaxed and happy. That room and my grandfather’s study. After lunch we would go there and drink coffee while my grandfather smoked his one cigarette of the day. It was there that we chatted and looked at his vitrines, which were filled with works of art, like a cabinet of curiosities.

The other thing I remember was the hall that was hung with Italian primitive paintings, of which there were more than 50. Some were placed in a reserve room. When collectors or museum directors came to see them, the butler brought the paintings one by one so that they could look at them at their ease. The pastel by Fernand Khnopff offered by Bonhams in October hung in my grandparents’ bedroom. They were very fond of it.

The house was extraordinary, but there was no sense of reality. This made it uneasy for me, especially as I went to a public city school. My friends there teased me, as the boy who lived in the marble house. My mother remarried when I was 15, and we moved out to live in a house of bricks. It was one of the happiest days of my life.