Dutch art
Many painters, sculptors and architects of the seventeenth century are called "Dutch masters", while earlier artists are generally referred to as part of the "Netherlandish" tradition.
The Hague School of the 19th century re-interpreted the range of subjects of the Golden Age in contemporary terms, and made Dutch painting once again a European leader.
Dutch painters, especially in the northern provinces, tried to evoke emotions in the spectator by letting the person be a bystander to a scene of profound intimacy.
The amount paid determined each person's place in the picture, either head to toe in full regalia in the foreground or face only in the back of the group.
Favourite topics in Dutch landscapes were the dunes along the western sea coast, rivers with their broad adjoining meadows where cattle grazed, often a silhouette of a city in the distance.
Possibly the best known Dutch painter in the first half of the 19th century, Johan Barthold Jongkind, after getting an art education in the country, moved over to France and spend most of his life in Paris.
Jacob Maris captured the many contrasting aspects of the Dutch landscape, from its deepest shadows to its brightest highlights, and from its hazy atmosphere to its clear, crisp air.
Famous painters among the Amsterdam Impressionists include George Hendrik Breitner, Willem de Zwart, Isaac Israëls, Simon Duiker and Jan Toorop.
He was the painter of city views par excellence: wooden foundation piles by the harbour, demolition work and construction sites in the old centre, horse trams on the Dam, or canals in the rain.
By the turn of the century, Breitner was a famous painter in the Netherlands, as demonstrated by a highly successful retrospective exhibition at Arti et Amicitiae in Amsterdam (1901).
Vincent van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a post-Impressionist painter whose work, notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty and bold color, had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art.
After years of painful anxiety and frequent bouts of mental illness,[3][4] he died aged 37 from a gunshot wound, generally accepted to be self-inflicted (although no gun was ever found).
In the early 20th century, there were retrospectives in Paris (1901 and 1905) and Amsterdam (Stedelijk Museum, 1905), and important group exhibitions in Cologne (Sonderbund westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler, 1912), New York (Armory Show, 1913) and Berlin (1914).
After World War I, De Stijl (the style) was led by Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian and promoted a pure art, consisting only of vertical and horizontal lines, and the use of primary colours.
Abstract art became famous in the Netherlands after the Second World War because of the memorable works of painters like Karel Appel and groups he was a part of such as COBRA.
