Pulchri Studio

The unspoilt countryside around even the rich coastal town of The Hague[2] with its rural environment and the unspoiled landscape and nature and the nearby fishing village of Scheveningen attracted many young artists.

The unaltered life of the people and the unspoilt polders and the North Sea coast played an important role.

The city of 's-Gravenhage (The Hague) with its surroundings and the coastal landscape of the North Sea at Scheveningen became attractive for young painters.

It wasn't only a place of social encounter, but at the same time it offered to the artists the opportunity to communicate with collectors and dealers.

Among the founding members of Pulchri has been Lambertus Hardenberg, Willem Roelofs, Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch and Bartholomeus Johannes van Hove.

[11] A short time later Johannes Bosboom, Jozef Israëls, Hendrik Willem Mesdag, Jan Weissenbruch and some lesser-known artists joined Pulchri.

Many painters, who are today attributed to the Hague School, had position on the board and made this cooperative to a stronghold: Bosboom was chairman from 1852 to 1853, Israëls from 1875 to 1878, and Mesdag from 1898 to 1907.

In 1884 a smaller Artists' Association – Arti et Industriae was established in The Hague, in order to promote Dutch art craft.

[14] Willem Maris, Johan Hendrik Weissenbruch and Georg Breitner were also trained at the Art Academy Blosboom,.

This movement was an expression of social and country-specific implementation of the very successful work of The Royal Watercolour Society to London.

Precisely because of the contacts with the environment of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the watercolours were attractive again as a version of the painting for artists.

Its founding members belonged to the core of the Hague School – the movement of the Dutch Impressionism and thus the Pulchri Studio.

[19] – In public, the Hague School took the opposite position and stood against the official art policy of the Dutch king.

This was notably represented by Artzt, de Bock, Bosboom, Israëls, Jacob and Willem Maris, Mauve, Mesdag and Neuhuys.

[22] After the Second World War was Pulchri Studio in disrepute: In 1943, the executive committee had submitted the order from Berlin to join the Reich-Chamber of Culture (Reichskulturkammer).

In 1996 Queen Beatrix just took the patronage of this artists association and helped her back to the traditional reputation and importance in the art scene of The Hague and the Netherlands.