The Flemish primitives
The northern provinces were not very prominent until the 15th century. Artistic production remained of modest quality, except in the art of miniature painting, which reached its peak with the three Limbourg brothers. They produced the Très Riches Heures of the Duke of Berry
, a masterpiece of illumination. The Flemish primitives, contemporaries of the Italian Renaissance, changed the situation. They painted in oil, on wooden panels, which allowed them to rework the details. The rendering of perspective and the easel format also characterized the late Gothic period. At the head of this movement was Jean Van Eyck (1390-1441), who ran a workshop in The Hague. Famous for his portraits, he entered the service of the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, and then settled in opulent Bruges. In 1432, he completed his famous altarpiece of the Mystic Lambin Ghent. He integrated realism, modeling and psychology into the new pictorial values. A turning point was reached with The Arnolfini couple, a couple shown in a real interior.The singularity of Jerome Bosch
The unique work of Bosch (1453-1516) combines late Gothic, fantasy, humanism and the thoughts of Erasmus and Thomas More. Endowed with an immense culture, he is a spiritual man who expresses his religiosity in scenes of an amazing technical mastery. His work is also moralizing, it is about chaos, a world ruined by sin. Admired during his lifetime, Bosch continues to inspire artists from all walks of life.
Influenced by Bosch but also by Italy, Pieter Bruegel, known as the Old or the Elder (1525-1569), lived in an era troubled by the Reformation and war. He differentiates himself by his sense of space and the importance he gives to the nature that surrounds humans.The Baroque of Rubens
The struggles against Spanish oppression that raged in the 16th century resulted in a slowdown in artistic activity. Artists left to study in Italy. But once independence was gained, prosperity hit the northern cities. The schools of Haarlem, The Hague, Delft, Leiden and Amsterdam fostered a sense of national identity. During the so-called Golden Age, historical paintings were abandoned in favor of portraits; religious subjects were simplified and humanized.
In this context, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) glorified the past power of the Netherlands in the tradition of the Counter-Reformation, and from 1600 onwards, mythology and the Italian model. Rubens grew up in Antwerp, where he studied with painters who taught him chiaroscuro. He then travelled to Italy where he acquired a formidable pictorial culture and received commissions from the aristocracy. Back in Antwerp, Rubens lightened his palette and became in 1608 the court painter of Albert of Austria and Isabella of Spain, two great patrons. Rubens, newly married, moved into the house that had become the Rubenshuis, which housed his studio and his collection of antique sculptures. He received commissions from all the nobles of Europe, carried out diplomatic missions and was knighted in 1624. His mythological scenes of great expressive power are the quintessence of the Baroque.Rembrandt's chiaroscuro
Rembrandt (1606-1669) exalts in his works his questioning of human destiny. He was only eighteen years old when he opened his studio in Leiden, after having trained with an emulator of Caravaggio. In a country that was establishing itself as a commercial power, the bourgeoisie wanted to have their portraits painted. Rembrandt settled in Amsterdam to meet their demands
In 1632, he painted Anatomy Lesson, a painting that broke with the laws of the genre. The composition is centered on the figure of Professor Tulp. This painting, which met with considerable success, launched the young Rembrandt. Commissions poured in. Among the first portraits painted in Amsterdam were two of the young Saskia, whom he married in 1634. Five years later, already rich and famous, he moved into a bourgeois residence, the Rembrandthuis - Rembrandt's House, which became a museum. But an avalanche of tragedies befell him, culminating in 1642 with the death of his wife while he was finishing The Night Watch (now in the Rijksmuseum). His painting was disliked and commissions became scarce. Isolation and ruin, far from overwhelming him, detached him from the constraints of the world. Rembrandt freed himself from pictorial conventions in favor of spirituality and emotion. At the age of 63, he died in total solitude
Back to naturalism
A painter of sobriety, Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) was the opposite of the baroque of Rembrandt. During his short career, he used full clarity, which contrasts with the chiaroscuro in vogue. His restrained realism borders on naturalism: gestures are simple, expressions peaceful, his details of an almost photographic meticulousness. He painted intimate interiors in which women with an intense presence are engaged in daily activities, such as La Laitière. His incomparable technique relies on the use of a darkroom (the origin of photography) which allows him to precisely retranscribe the depth of a setting. With the same precision, he painted landscapes, such as the View of Delft. In 1665, he signed The Girl with a Pearl, nicknamed "the Mona Lisa of the North", a young woman isolated against a dark background that appeals to the viewer, her pearl capturing the light. Only 37 works are officially attributed to her. Most are in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Mauritshuis in The Hague.
The truculent Frans Hals (1580-1666) is like his characters. The work of this free-spirited and playful artist contrasts with the rigor of the times. He arrived in Haarlem at the age of 10. Despite his fame, his troubles with the authorities led him to end his life in the Haarlem hospice, where the Frans Hals Museum Hof now stands. As a painter of human expression, his style is at its most vivid in the hundred or so portraits he painted: drinkers, singers, smokers, bon vivants and other common people inhabit this work full of color and energy.
The genius of Van Gogh
Vincent Van Gogh was born in 1853 in Brabant. Son of a Calvinist pastor and nephew of art dealers, he began his career in the Goupil gallery in The Hague, London and then Paris. A mystical figure, he took on an evangelical mission among the miners of the Borinage coal basin. But his fraternal approach and his free interpretation of the Gospels provoked the ire of the authorities. He joined his brother Theo in Paris, where he met Toulouse-Lautrec and Gauguin. Self-portraits in very light colors date from this period. The year 1888 marked the beginning of a fertile period. Settled in Arles, Van Gogh worked feverishly: View of Arles with irises, The Sunflowers, Boats on the beach, The Arlesienne, The Alyscamps... He freed himself from traditional representation in favor of a simplification of forms and a vibrant palette. It was at this time that his relationship with Gauguin, who found him in Arles, became tumultuous. During a delirium, he cut off a piece of his ear. After two stays at the Saint-Rémy nursing home, he settled in Auvers-sur-Oise, under the care of Dr. Gachet. This period was one of dramatic lyricism. He committed suicide on July 27, 1890. A precursor of the Fauvists and Expressionism, this visionary became a legendary figure in the 20th century. In 2011, his suicide is questioned in Van Gogh: The Life, a biography recommended by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
De Stijl and abstraction
Born in 1872 in Amersfoort, Mondrian studied at the Amsterdam Academy of Fine Arts. The search for a new pictorial balance haunts his youth. He groped in all directions, including mysticism, impressionism, pointillism and symbolism. In 1911, he discovered the cubist works of Picasso and Braque, then moved to Paris. But he continued to evolve towards more simplification, and undertook series (trees, seascapes ...) frankly abstract, devoid of reference to any reality. Back in Holland, in 1917, he founded with Theo Van Doesburg the group and the magazine De Stijl
which set out the principles of neoplasticism. After the war, color was reduced to the three primary colors: blue, red and yellow. Geometric abstraction was born. At the dawn of the Second World War, he left to live in New York, where he made a return to color. He died in 1944, the same year as Kandinsky.In parallel to this purity embodied by Mondrian and the De Stijl movement, an expressionist trend emerged, in the tradition of Van Gogh. Kies Van Dongen is the best representative. Born in 1877 in Delfshaven, he showed a rare aptitude for drawing at a very early age. When he went to live in Paris, he perfected, far from any academicism, a style of great freedom, and chose violent colors for their expressive value. At the 1913 Autumn Salon, Van Dongen caused a scandal with a nude that was considered indecent and ensured his fame. Commissions poured in and he quickly established himself as the portraitist of good society in the 1920s and 1930s.
The great currents of the 20th century, including De Stilj, are brought together at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. A first at the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam: it is possible to visit the reserves, the Repository, of this collection which covers seven centuries of art.Nowadays
Contemporary art can be discovered in countless galleries and institutions in the Netherlands. At the forefront of emerging and established artists, but also curators, the Witte de With at the Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam is one of the pioneering institutions. In recent years, private museums have been on the rise. A few kilometers from The Hague, the Voorlinden
Museum is a jewel box of artistic originality bordered by the dunes. It houses the collection of the industrialist Joop van Caldenborgh, complemented by the sculpture garden. Guaranteed to please!Which artists to follow closely? Berdnaut Smilde is a cloud maker who captures the ephemeral in dreamlike settings that are seen around the world. Wieki Somers' surreal world is full of imagination; his fables of the everyday have been entered into the MoMA. Photographer Arno Nollen is fascinated by unusual models, whose souls he captures without filters. His portraits, admired by David Lynch, are sometimes exhibited at the Gabriel Rolt gallery in Amsterdam. Another photographer of the human soul, Rineke Dijkstra captures the fragility of her models, captured from the front, in bare natural settings. Mark Manders' poetic sculpture reconciles antiquity, the Middle Ages and the contemporary in gigantic but fragile structures.
Holland encourages street art. Collectives such as De Strakke Hand are behind creative series in the Hanseatic cities and beyond @DiscoverHansa. In Amsterdam, Banksy rubs shoulders with Warhol and Basquiat at the Moco Museum.
There's even the Graffiti and Street Art Museum, which stretches for 4 km. Two open-air sites to visit in Eindhoven: Strijp and Berenkuil. The Berenkuil is a series of tunnels and bike paths under the Insulindeplein square. Every year, the Step in the Arena festival brings together international artists. In Arnhem, the World Street Painting Festival will light up your summer!
