The Flemish primitives
Until the 15th century, the northern provinces were of little interest. Artistic production remained of modest quality, except in the art of miniature painting, which reached its apogee with the three Limbourg brothers. They produced the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, a masterpiece of illumination.
The Flemish Primitives, contemporaries of the Italian Renaissance, changed all that. They painted in oil, on wooden panels, which enabled them to rework details. The rendering of perspective and the easel format also characterized the late Gothic period. They were led by 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, before settling in opulent Bruges. In 1432, he completed his famous Altarpiece of the Mystic Lambin Ghent. He integrated realism, modeling and psychology with new pictorial values. A turning point came with The Arnolfini Husband and Wife, 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 was a spiritual man who expressed his religiosity in scenes of astounding technical mastery. His work is also moralistic, dealing with chaos and a world ruined by sin. Admired during his lifetime, Bosch continues to inspire artists from all horizons.
Influenced by Bosch, but also by Italy, Pieter Bruegel, known as the Old Man or the Elder (1525-1569), lived in an era troubled by the Reformation and war. What sets him apart is his sense of space and the importance he places on the natural world surrounding human beings.
The Baroque of Rubens
Struggles against Spanish oppression in the 16th century led to a slowdown in artistic activity. Artists left to study in Italy. But once independence was achieved, prosperity returned to the cities of the North. 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 portraiture; 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 spent time in Italy, where he acquired a formidable pictorial culture and received commissions from the aristocracy. Back in Antwerp, Rubens lightened his palette and in 1608 became court painter to Albert of Austria and Isabella of Spain, two great patrons of the arts. As a young married man, Rubens 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, undertook diplomatic missions and was knighted in 1624. His highly expressive mythological scenes are the quintessence of Baroque.
Rembrandt's chiaroscuro
Rembrandt (1606-1669) exalts in his works his questioning of human destiny. He was only eighteen when he opened his studio in Leiden, after training with an emulator of Caravaggio. In a country that was establishing itself as a commercial power, the bourgeoisie were keen to have their portraits painted. Rembrandt settled in Amsterdam to meet their demands.
In 1632, he signed The Anatomy Lesson, a painting that broke with the laws of the genre. The composition focuses on the figure of Professor Tulp. This painting, which met with considerable success, launched the young Rembrandt. Commissions poured in. Among the first portraits he 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 middle-class residence, the Rembrandthuis - Rembrandt's House, now 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 were few and far between. Isolation and ruin, far from overpowering 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 Rembrandt. During his short career, he used full clarity, in stark contrast to the prevailing chiaroscuro. His restrained realism borders on naturalism: gestures are simple, expressions peaceful, details meticulous, almost photographic. He painted intimate interiors in which intensely present women engaged in everyday activities, such as La Laitière. His incomparable technique relies on the use of a darkroom (the origin of photography), which enables him to precisely retranscribe the depth of a setting. With the same precision, he painted landscapes, such as View of Delft. In 1665, he signed La Jeune Fille à la perle, nicknamed the "Mona Lisa of the North", a young woman isolated against a dark background, her pearl catching the light and captivating the viewer. Only 37 works are officially attributed to her. Most are in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum and The Hague's Mauritshuis .
The truculent Frans Hals (1580-1666) is like his characters. The work of this playful free spirit contrasts with the rigor of the times. He arrived in Haarlem at the age of 10. Despite his fame, his run-ins with the authorities led him to end his life in the Haarlem hospice, where the Frans Hals Museum Hof now stands. A painter of human expression, it is above all in the hundred or so portraits he signed that his style is at its most vivid: drinkers, singers, smokers, bon vivants and other common folk inhabit this work full of color and energy.
The genius of Van Gogh
Vincent Van Gogh was born in Brabant in 1853. Son of a Calvinist pastor and nephew of art dealers, he made his debut at 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 coalfield. But his fraternal approach and 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 tones date from this period. 1888 marked the beginning of a fertile period. Settled in Arles, Van Gogh worked feverishly: Vue d'Arles aux iris (View of Arles with irises), Les Tournesols (Sunflowers), Les Barques sur la plage (Boats on the beach) , L'Arlésienne (The Arlesienne), Les Alyscamps (The Alyscamps). .. He freed himself from traditional representation in favor of simplified forms and a vibrant palette. It was at this time that his relationship with Gauguin, who met him again in Arles, became tumultuous. In a fit of 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 was the period of his dramatic lyricism. He committed suicide on July 27, 1890. A precursor of the Fauves and Expressionism, this visionary became a legendary figure in the 20th century. In 2011, his suicide was called into question in Van Gogh: The Life, a biography recommended by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
De Stijl and abstraction
Born in Amersfoort in 1872, Mondrian studied at the Amsterdam Academy of Fine Arts. The search for a new pictorial balance haunted his youth. He groped in all directions, including mysticism, impressionism, pointillism and symbolism. In 1911, he discovered the cubist works of Picasso and Braque, and moved to Paris. But he continued to evolve towards greater simplification, and undertook series (trees, seascapes...) that were frankly abstract, devoid of any reference to reality. Back in Holland, in 1917 he and Theo Van Doesburg founded the De Stijl group and magazine, 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. On the eve of the Second World War, he moved to New York, where he returned to color. He died in 1944, the same year as Kandinsky.
Parallel to the purity embodied by Mondrian and the De Stijl movement, an Expressionist trend emerged, in the tradition of Van Gogh. Kies Van Dongen is its best representative. Born in Delfshaven in 1877, he showed a rare aptitude for drawing from an early age. When he moved to Paris, he honed his free-spirited style, far from academism, and chose violent colors for their expressive value. At the Salon d'Automne in 1913, Van Dongen caused a scandal with a nude considered indecent, which ensured his fame. Commissions poured in, and he soon established himself as the portraitist of good society in the 1920s and 1930s.
The major trends of the 20th century, including De Stilj, are brought together at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. A first at Rotterdam's Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum: it is possible to visit the reserves, the Depot, of this collection covering seven centuries of art.
Nowadays
Contemporary art can be discovered in countless galleries and institutions in the Netherlands. The Witte de With at Rotterdam's Kunstinstituut Melly is one of the country's pioneering institutions, at the forefront of both emerging and established artists, as well as curators. In recent years, private museums have been on the upswing. A few kilometers from The Hague, the Voorlinden Museum is a jewel case of artistic originality bordered by dunes. It houses the collection of industrialist Joop van Caldenborgh, complemented by the sculpture garden. Guaranteed to please!
Which artists to follow closely? Berndaut Smilde is a cloud-maker who captures the ephemeral in his dreamlike stagings that are being seen around the world. The surreal world of Wieki Somers overflows with imagination; his fables of everyday life have been exhibited at MoMA. Photographer Arno Nollen is fascinated by unusual models, whose unfiltered souls he captures. 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 from the front, in uncluttered natural settings. Mark Manders' poetic sculpture reconciles antiquity, the Middle Ages and the contemporary in gigantic yet fragile structures.
Holland encourages street art. Collectives such as De Strakke Hand are behind creative series deployed in Hanseatic cities, and beyond @DiscoverHansa. In Amsterdam, Banksy rubs shoulders with Warhol and Basquiat at the Moco Museum. There's even a 4 km-long Graffiti and Street Art museum, the Straat-Museum.
Two open-air sites to visit in Eindhoven: Strijp and Berenkuil. The Berenkuil is a succession of tunnels and bike paths beneath 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!
