Nello en Patrache

Hoboken



fort

Nello en Patrasche, afgebeeld in een Amerikaanse uitgave van het boek uit 1891

Nello en Patrasche

A Dog of Flanders is an 1872 novel by English author Marie Louise de la Ramée published with her pseudonym "Ouida". It is about a Flemish boy named Nello and his dog, Patrasche, and is set in Antwerp. In Japan, Korea and the Philippines, the novel has been an extremely popular children's classic for decades and has been adapted into several Japanese films and anime. Since the 1980s, the Belgian board of tourism caught on to the phenomenon and built two monuments honoring the story to please East-Asian tourists. There is a small statue of Nello and Patrasche at the Kapelstraat in the Antwerp suburb of Hoboken, and a commemorative plaque in front of the Antwerp Cathedral donated by Toyota, that was later replaced by a marble statue of the two characters covered by a cobblestone blanket, created by the artist Batist Vermeulen.



Nello en Patrache

Nello and Patrasche who were two characters from a children's book from 1872 that is set in Antwerp. In Flanders, few will even know the story, but the book is still incredibly popular in the United States and Japan. The book, A Dog of Flanders by Marie-Louise de la Ramee, tells the story of an orphan boy called Nello and his dog Patrasche. They sell milk together in the city. Nello has a huge talent for drawing and would love to see the two paintings by Rubens which hang in the Cathedral, the Elevation of the Cross and the Descent from the Cross. But Nello can’t because cloths are hung over the canvasses and these are only removed for a fee. In the story, things go from bad to worse. Nello must even sell Patrasche because he has no money. During a snowstorm, Nello gets lost but finds his way back to the Cathedral by feeling his way. There he sees Patrasche who has escaped from his new owner. With the last of his strength, Nello removes the cloths from the paintings to admire them in their full glory. Next morning, the two friends are found frozen to death under one of the paintings.

For more than 100,000 Japanese visitors, the statue of Nello and Patrasche is a kind of pilgrimage. From the statue, they go directly to the two Rubens paintings in the Cathedral and continue on to Hoboken, where Nello and Patrasche would have lived.