Hague School

The fine arts in the Netherlands enjoyed a revival around 1830, a time now referred to as the Romantic period in Dutch painting.

Gerard Bilders left the Hague Academy of Drawing and completed training with the Swiss animal painter, Charles Humbert.

Jozef Israëls, unsatisfied with the academies at Groningen and Amsterdam, left for Paris to attend classes at the studio of François-Édouard Picot.

Jacob Maris left the Hague Academy for the corresponding institution in Antwerp and from there he went to study with Ernest Hébert in Paris.

In the 1830s artists like Théodore Rousseau, Jean-François Millet, Charles-François Daubigny, and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot found their way to Barbizon, a forested area near Fontainebleau.

This gave rise to the well known Barbizon school and their example was followed in the 1850s by a few Dutch painters who gathered in Oosterbeek in order to work in the surrounding countryside.

Johannes Warnardus Bilders, father of Gerard Bilders, moved to Oosterbeek in 1852 and attracted many pupils: Anton Mauve, a cousin-in-law of Vincent van Gogh, the Maris brothers (Jacob, Willem and Matthijs) in the summer, as well as the regular visitors Willem Roelofs and Paul Gabriël.

Friendship played an important role in this group of painters and whenever one of them was invited to take part in a major exhibition, he would arrange for his friends to also submit work.

Growing discontent among the young artists in The Hague about the apparently insufficient opportunities for training and development was the reason for establishing the Pulchri Studio.

J. H. Weissenbruch blurred the details in his later work, painting beach scenes and landscapes in magnificently conceived planes of color with an almost abstract quality.

Willem Maris became the painter of light he had always tried to be, producing summer meadows with sunlight sparkling on the water and cattle—the quintessence of the Dutch landscape.

He worked for years on his paintings of brides and portraits of children, which became increasingly hazy and dreamy until finally becoming completely detached from reality.

This movement drew on city life for its subject matter, although the contrast with the Hague School was less pronounced than is occasionally suggested.

Although not usually associated with the Hague School, Johan Jongkind was called a forerunner of impressionism who influenced Eugène Boudin, who later was mentor to Claude Monet.

This movement, too, was picked up in the Netherlands, resulting in a Dutch post-impressionism and introducing abstract elements and cubism into modern painting.