Johann Georg Hameter, Railway Bridge over the Meuse nearby Rotterdam, 1877, Collotype, 27,2 x 47,7 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
Paul Joseph Constant Gabriël, In the month July, A windmill on a polder waterway, 1887-1888, Oil on canvas, 102 x 66 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. |
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Kunsthal Rotterdam
Westzeedijk 341
+31 10 4400300
Rotterdam
New Horizons.
The Hague School
and the modern Dutch landscape
Collection Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
and Neue Pinakothek, Münich
September 12-December 6, 2009
By the end of the 19th century the flat and open Dutch landscape with its famous cloudy skies and mills changes once and for all: railways, channels and bridges appear. The attractive landscape, captured by various painters belonging to The Hague School, rapidly changed. With over thirty historic photographs and an exquisite selection of The Hague School paintings from the collections of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and the Neue Pinakothek Munich, Kunsthal Rotterdam casts a surprising glance at the landscape painting and photography of the 19th century.
The Industrialization set in relatively late in the Netherlands. It was only from 1860 onwards that industriali- zation and urbanization started to leave their marks on the Dutch landscape. Kilometers of train rails were constructed. The digging of channels and building of railroad bridges opened up various areas: the Nieuwe Waterweg (1872) made it possible to reach the Rotterdam Harbor easily from the sea and the Moerdijkbrug (1871) connected the provinces of Zuid-Holland and Noord-Brabant. The big infrastructural works altered the typically Dutch landscape with its desolate fields, vacant polders and low horizons. Instead of all this, a modern landscape, with steam driven pumping stations, broad and straight rivers and a web of railways and telegraph poles, emerged.
Ever since the 17th century endless panoramic views, here and there interrupted by a church tower or mill, have been a source of inspiration to landscape painters such as Jacob van Ruysdael and Jan van Goyen. Following the French School of Barbizon painters belonging to The Hague School, amongst whom Willem Roelofs, Jozef Israëls, Anton Mauve, the Maris brothers, Hendrik Willem Mesdag and Johan Weissenbruch went outside in order to capture the Dutch landscape on canvas. As subject of their paintings they chose places where the rise of industry and cities was still visible. In a realistic manner and with great sense of use of light and atmosphere they painted the dunes, the sea and polders. Master pieces like Jacob Maris’The truncated windmill (1871) or Village in the dunes (ca 1885-90) by Julius van de Sande Bakhuyzen wonderfully represent the altering, slowly vanishing Dutch landscape.
Not only painters belonging to The Hague School, but also photographers showed a keen interest in the alterations of the landscape. Commissioned by the engineers at Rijkswaterstaat a small group of photographers, amongst whom Pieter Oosterhuis, Johann Georg Hameter and Henri de Louw, documented the examples of the constructional tour de force that emerged in the landscape. The business like photo series which they made clearly show how the Dutch landscape was permanently and radically changed by the end of the nineteenth century. They also compensate for the romantic works by pictorial photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and James Craig Annan, who primarily focused on rural Holland, following the painters. From these engineer photographs it becomes clear that the painters belonging to The Hague School presented a rather one-sided image of the Netherlands. In doing so the exhibition aims to adapt the existing image of the Dutch landscape as it was by the end of the nineteenth century.
At Hatje Cantz publishers a catalogue in German entitled Der Weite Blick, Landschaften der Haager Schule aus dem Rijksmuseum ISBN 978-7757-2270-4 has been published. |
