Summary of The Hague School
The Hague School took its name from the coastal city in the Netherlands where a group of Dutch artists lived and worked roughly between 1860 and 1890. Influenced by the landscapes of the Dutch Golden Age and the French Barbizon School, the Hague School reacted against traditional academic painting, putting emphasis on realistic representations rather than idealized or romantic imagery. Painting rural landscapes and scenes of coastal life, their en plein air ("in open air") works emphasized atmosphere and mood while employing a sombre and muted color palette that lead to the group being dubbed the "Gray School". Writing in 1875, the Dutch critic Jan van Santen Kolf wrote, "They have revealed the poetry of grey in a hitherto unprecedented [sic] manner. In that grey atmosphere they find the ideal gradations of tone that they are looking for and we must recognize with admiration that they succeed in rendering what people had no idea of before with a fine sensitivity". A young Vincent van Gogh spent periods of time working and studying with the School that can take credit for leading Dutch art through its evolution into the modern age with the birth of Amsterdam Impressionism.
Key Ideas & Accomplishments
- Before the nineteenth century, the major tendency in art had been to idealize the landscape. The new century saw a shift away from the conventions of Classicism towards a more detailed, more realistic, approach to the landscape. The philosophy of Naturalism became one of the most important trends in nineteenth century art, providing a bridge in fact between academic art and Impressionism. Coming to the fore in the later part of the century, the Hague School artists came as close as any of the Naturalists to replicating the actual experience of standing in meadows and woodlands.
- One of its earliest pioneers, Gerard Bilders brought a further dimension to the School by introducing livestock into his landscapes. Indeed, this became a signifying feature of the School and was realized more fully by the likes of Anton Mauve and Józef Israëls. Later, Willem Maris specialized in animal paintings, even producing a highly regarded "Duck" series that moved away from the grey tones in favor of an expressive, impasto, treatment. This approach earned Maris the mantle of "Hague School Impressionist".
- The School's focus on its locality to the Hague extended to adjoining coastal regions where the beeches and shorelines meet with the North Sea. Artists such as Jacob Maris and Johan Hendrik Weissenbruch expanded the fixed definition of Dutch landscape painting by translating, through oils and watercolors, the distinctive weather and lighting conditions produced where the extended low horizon of the flat sea meets with the expansive sky.
- While the landscape remained the dominant subject in the Hague School's paintings, the group was willing to "move with the times" by recording the changing Dutch landscape as it was being transformed by the building of railways, canals and bridges. It was the Hague School artists who provided the lasting aesthetic and historical record of the Netherland's transition into a modern industrial nation.
- While it invariably reflected the brooding "gray mood" of the Dutch landscapes, the School was willing to accommodate different positions, such as that of Paul Gabriël who proclaimed, "Our country is saturated with colour. I repeat, our country is not grey, not even in grey weather, nor are the dunes grey".
Overview of The Hague School
The masterful and atmospheric oil and watercolor paintings of Jacob Maris reveal, according to the art critic Theophile De Bock, an "intimate acquaintance with colour in all its gradations" and that the "charm they exert" comes from "the nobility and loftiness of spirit ever unconsciously reflected in this great artist's work".
