Dutch Art in Detail by Lecturis

Dutch Art Detail

Dutch A in D

Art Works of art from seven centuries

Detail Lecturis

One hundred works of art from more than six hundred years of Dutch art. How many significant works of art have been created in the space of six hundred years? Certainly thousands. To select just one hundred of them, as a kind of standard, would not do justice to the richness of the centuries. These thousands of pieces must be given a place in a greater historical record of Dutch art, which will hopefully be written one day. Dutch Art in Detail is therefore not an attempt to capture the entire history of Dutch art in one hundred artworks. The aim of the book is to present the diversity and quality of art in the Netherlands by shining the spotlight on more than fifty collections, mostly from museums but also private and corporate collections as well as one piece from a public space. The choice of work or works was left to a director, a curator or someone else who is entrusted with the collection in question. It is interesting to see which pieces are most highly valued by the people that deal with them on a daily basis. We see a great appreciation for paintings from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, but also – by presenting the works in chronological order – that certain decades are scantily represented. The eighteenth century, for exemple, is traversed with great strides. Rightly so or not, these years can still count on little recognition. The chronological structure of the book also clearly demonstrates in which directions the art in the Netherlands developed during a period of seven centuries. We see the development of art that is linked to the church, state, nobility and the bourgeoisie and the emergence of art that was independent of these groups. We see the shifts in understanding of what is classed as art and what is not – designers such as Gerrit Rietveld and Christien Meindertsma are included. And we see the unstoppable arise of photography as an art form. The geographical borders of the Netherlands, as it has existed since 1830, have been used wherever possible. However, in the early fifteenth century, where this book begins, there is no mention of the ‘Low Countries’ or any such political entity, let alone of the Netherlands. The section on ancient art therefore includes several artists that are clearly linked to the north, but who were born and raised in what is now Belgium. More recently, there are artists that are not of Dutch decent or have left the Netherlands to establish themselves as artist elsewhere. They are included in the book because they are considered to be part of the panorama of ‘Dutch art’. The book begins with an image by Claus de Werve from around 1410 and ends with a photo by Viviane Sassen from 2013. These are benchmarks marking the journey taken by Dutch art throughout the seven centuries.

Woody van Amen Goldfinger 569 Mari Andriessen Docker 497 anonymous master Christ and the Samaritan woman at the city of Breda 41 View of Zwolle 89 Karel Appel Femmes, enfants, animaux / Women, children, animals 489

Geertgen tot Sint Jans Christ as Man of Sorrows 25 Willem van Genk Brooklyn Bridge 545 Siebe Wiemer Glastra Nebuchadnezzar 537 Vincent van Gogh Café terrace at night (Place du Forum) 289 The peat barge 273 Wheatfield under thunderclouds 297 Jan van Goyen View of The Hague from the South-East 137

Gerrit van Bakel Tarim Machine of the Utah-Tarim connection 609 Gerrit Benner Land and clouds 601 Caspar Berger Torso ZZM/Self-portrait 6 713 Blommers & Schumm Meriba 793 George Hendrik Breitner Horse trams on the Dam 329 Pieter Bruegel the Elder The tower of Babel 73 Cornelis Buys II The parting of Jacob and Laban 57

Meijer de Haan Portrait of a lady 265 Frans Hals Portrait of a couple, Probably Isaac Abrahamsz Massa and Beatrix van der Laen 97 Jan van Hemessen (omgeving) The Fall of Men 65 Hans van Hoek Red kimono 617 Gerard van Honthorst The procuress 113 Pieter de Hooch Man reading a letter to a woman 177

Lita Cabellut Portrait of Frida Kahlo 745 Constant Fauna 481 Hanging sector 529 Jan Cremer Desert fight 521

Isaac Israels Female nude lying on a divan 393 Jozef Israëls The Widower, the Fisherman’s Return 225 Theo Jansen Animaris ordis mutantis 729

René Daniëls Painting on the Bullfight 641 Rineke Dijkstra Ruth Drawing Picasso, Tate Liverpool 2009 721 Theo van Doesburg Final design for The sower 409 Kees van Dongen The blue dress 377 Marlene Dumas Liberation 649 Naomi 665 Ed van der Elsken Bagara 513 Ruud van Empel Generation #3 753

Rombout II Keldermans (design) St. Christopher’s Mantelpiece 49 Dick Ket Still life with the hand 457 Klaas Kloosterboer 97102 673 Pyke Koch Portrait of a woman (portrait of H.M. Koch-de Geer) 465 The shooting gallery 449 Barend Cornelis Koekkoek The storm 217 Willem de Kooning Rosy-fingered dawn at Louse Point 553 Gerard van Kuijl Cleverness beats strength 129

Pieter Gallis Festoon with flowers and fruit 185

Dom Hans van der Laan ALPHABET 625

Ger Lataster Children playing 561

Maria Roosen Milk cans 657

Mark Manders Mind Study 761 Jan Mankes Winter landscape with ditch 385 Keetje Mans Span 769 Daniël Marot (design) Tapestry with seated figures 193 Master of the Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves Book of hours 17 Anton Mauve Donkey stand on the beach at Scheveningen 249 Winter landscape at sunset 281 Jan Meefout Venus slumbering 633 Christien Meindertsma One sheep sweater 777 Melle Landscape with hazelnut 593 Hendrik Willem Mesdag Panorama Mesdag 257 Jan Mijtens Portrait of Willem van den Kerckhoven and his family 153 Piet Mondrian Chrysanthemum flower 361 Row of eleven poplars in red 353 Victory Boogie Woogie 473 Marc Mulders Le jardin d’eau 801

Viviane Sassen Liba 809 Spring of the Nile 689 Andreas Schelfhout Ice skating near a Dutch town 233 Jan Sluijters Standing nude from behind 369 Gerard van Spaendonck Flowers in an alabaster vase and fruit on a marble slab 209 Gé-Karel van der Sterren Jolly Jumper 705 Abraham Susenier Still life with shells 161 Shinkichi Tajiri Machine No. 2 577 Willem Bastiaan Tholen The Arntzenius sisters 305 Johan Thorn Prikker Football players 337 Theodoor van Thulden Portrait of Josina Copes-Schade van Westrum and her children 145 JCJ Vanderheyden Sky Window Blue Yellow 681 Johannes Vermeer Woman Reading a Letter 169 Reinier Vinkeles The Teeken academie over the Leidsche Poort in Amsterdam 201 Jan Voerman IJssel landscape with fishermen 441 herman de vries Random pattern with dots 108 (V71-108) 585 Hendrik Vroom Battle at Rammekens (design) 81 View of Hoorn 105

Eric Odijk Gobelin Canadien 737 Erwin Olaf The Keyhole 785 Wendelien van Oldenborgh Maurits Script 697 Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsaenen Triptych with Mary and Child, music-playing angels, Joris Sampson, Engelken Coolen and their children 33 Pier Pander Alba / Morning 313

J.H. Weissenbruch Noorden, near Nieuwkoop 345 Hendrik Werkman Chimneys 2, Composition with letters a, Composition with weights, Composition 417 Claus de Werve Peter 9 Jan Wiegers Kirchner in studio 433 Hendrik Jan Wolter Residents of the St. Peter and Blokland Almhouse (Amersfoort) 321

Rembrandt van Rijn Bust of an old man with turban 121 Gerrit Rietveld Rietveld Pavilion 505 Witteveen high chair 401 Thijs Rinsema Still life with mandolin and blue goblet 425 Willem Roelofs The rainbow 241

The Fall of Men Jan van Hemessen (Circle), ca. 1550-1560,

with the heavenly landscape, which functions as a setting for three small additional scenes: the expulsion from Paradise on the left, God instructing Adam and Eve in the centre and the creation of Eve deep in the woods on the right. The creation of Eve in the background right is based on two prints published by the German printmaker Heinrich Aldegrever in 1540 and 1541. There are also many animals in the painting, most prominent of which are the monkey and the fawn in the foreground left and right respectively. There are also a unicorn, a lion and a variety of birds. The Fall certainly follows the tradition of pictures of this theme as created since Dürer’s well-known engraving from 1504 in the workshops of artists like Jan Gossaert (Staatliche Museen Berlin, Gemäldegalerie) and Pieter Coecke van Aelst (Dulwich Picture Gallery London). However, the artist of the Bonnefantenmuseum’s panel took several other examples as his model as well. The most striking feature is the figure of Adam, who is sitting on a rock leaning back, while he is depicted standing up on practically all the Netherlandish versions. We find an identical seated Adam on a painting by Titian (Madrid,

oil on panel, 200 x 168 cm; acquired in 2005 with the support of the Rembrandt Association The Bonnefanten Museum The Bonnefantenmuseum collects and presents outstanding art histories and forges links between art practices and the community. The collection includes an important selection of mediaeval religious objects, woodcarvings from the Maasland region, early Italian painting and sixteenth-century painting from the Southern Netherlands. There is also an interesting collection of international contemporary art that strongly represents conceptual art, minimal art and arte povera. The Bonnefantenmuseum also represents artists working in the region of Maastricht, and houses the ‘Limburg core collection’. g p. 761 Jan van Hemessen (circle) (Hemiksem, B, ca. 1500 – Antwerp, B, 1575-1579) The Maastricht Fall of Men can be situated in the direct circle of Jan Sanders van Hemessen. Of all the sixteenth-century Netherlandish artists, Jan van Hemessen is one of the most appealing to the imagination. Born in Hemiksem near Antwerp, he was apprenticed to Hendrick van Cleve in the Scheldestad and became a free master in 1524. Around a dozen of Van Hemessen’s paintings are dated; the earliest in 1525 and the latest in 1551. The artist worked in a real artistic melting pot, situated in the same artistic circle as the painters Pieter Aertsen (1508-1573) and Jan van Amstel (ca. 1500-1542), who originated from Amsterdam. Besides the customary religious scenes, such as the Descent from the Cross, Van Hemessen also painted secular and even burlesque scenes, such as the Prodigal son in a brothel, whereby only the title still refers to the original biblical story. As usual in the sixteenth century, the free master Jan van Hemessen led a workshop, where pupils, assistants and sometimes journeymen were employed. The small figures in the background of the Fall show a striking resemblance to those of the anonymous assistant of Van Hemessen. Whom is only known by his name of convenience: the Master of Saint Paul and Barnabas. It is interesting that Jan van Hemessen also employed his daughter Catharina (ca. 1528 – after 1567) as an apprentice. She was to create a furore as an independent artist, which was a very rare occurrence for a woman in the early modern period.

Museo del Prado) from around 1550. Knowledge of Titian’s painting also explains Adam’s ambivalent pose; he is recoiling from the apple, while still accepting it. The only difference between the two figures is that in Titian’s work Adam is refusing the apple. Of course, the question remains of how the Antwerp painter knew of Titan’s invention. Maybe the owner of the Italian painting, the Spanish courtier Antonio Perez, played a role in this. Prior to 1557, Perez was studying in Titian, The Fall, ca. 1550, 240 x 186 cm, Museo Nacional der Prado Leuven, and could possibly have shared his knowledge there. Also remarkable is the similarity to the Tendilla retable (Cincinnati Art Museum). The left-hand panel of this almost 4.5 m. wide composite altarpiece depicts a Fall that is strongly reminiscent of the Maastricht panel. The panels for this retable were painted in the 1550’s in the workshop of Jan van Hemessen in Antwerp. If the Maastricht Fall was a panel from an altarpiece, it must have been exceptionally large; comparable in size to the largest retables produced in Western Europe. Retables of this size are mainly found – once again – in Spain. Unfortunately, the reverse of the work offers few clues, as it was cradled in the past.

The Fall of Men Adam and Eve are depicted almost life-size in the Garden of Eden. Spurred on by the serpent, Eve offers the apple to Adam, who is leaning backwards and supporting himself with his right hand on a rock, as if he is recoiling. Nevertheless, he is on the point of taking the apple in his left hand. The smooth, light skin of the two figures forms a strong contrast

Lars Hendrikman, curator old masters Bonnefanten Museum

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View of Hoorn Pieter Vroom, 1622, oil on canvas, 202 x 105

cm; collection Hoorn since 1622 Westfries Museum The Westfries Museum in Hoorn is a museum of the Golden Age, located in the Statencollege – built in 1632 – with its imposing, richly decorated façade. The museum has 27 rooms, each with their own atmosphere and theme. The power of the museum is in its variation. The presentation of the collection is classic and rich in atmosphere, the exhibitions and activities are idiosyncratic and surprising. g p. 185 Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom (Haarlem 1562-1563 – Haarlem 1640) Hendrick Vroom lead a tumultuous and adventurous life. He set out at an early age to travel and his life story reads like a thrilling adventure story. Hendrick began, like his father, as a painter of pottery. The famous Schilder-Boeck by Carel van Mander states that Vroom travelled through Italy visiting Venice, Milan, Genoa and Turin, as well as other European cities such as Lyon, Paris, Rouen and Danzig. His wanderlust brought him into contact with Cardinal Ferdinando de Medici (whose courtyard he worked on for two years), as well as the painter Paul Bril, from whom he learned a great deal. One of his journeys to Spain he found himself in dire circumstances during a shipwreck and washed up half dead on the Portuguese coast. He survived and after his recovery boarded another ship to travel home. However, things took a turn for the worse when he landed in prison, the Portuguese thinking that he was an English pirate. Somehow he managed to convince them that he really was a painter and was finally allowed to leave for Lisbon, where he signed up for a ship bound for Holland. But the experience of the shipwreck had made Hendrick nervous and at the very last moment he disembarked; the ship left without him and, as fate would have it, the ship went down will all hands lost. Everyone at home thought that Vroom had also died aboard the ship, but some time later he turned up hale and hearty in Haarlem. Vroom then turned almost entirely to maritime art, creating an impressive collection of work, including the painting of Hoorn (for which the city paid him four hundred guilders). Central to the painting are two stately VOC ships. Further inspection shows that they are the front and rear of one and the same Pinas boat. Vroom often painted ships in such a way that they did not overlap, giving the viewer a full parade of the various ships that made up the fleet. His talent was also clear to his contemporaries and he had a significant influence on other well known maritime painters such as Cornelis Verbeeck and Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen. g p. 81

View of Hoorn One of the most important pieces in the paintings collection at the Westfries Museum is a painting by Hendrick Vroom. The work, depicting the view of the harbour at Hoorn, was painted in 1622 at the request of the Hoorn city council. It hung in the Old Town Hall, highlighting the grandeur of Hoorn on behalf of the city council. In the painting we can see the skyline showing the city being at its most economically strong at the time. It is notable that if you look down from Markermeer to the harbour now, the current skyline varies very little from what a seventeenth century skipper would have seen from aboard his Pinas or Fluyt (cargo ship): wealth, industry and one of the most beautiful collections of façades in the Zuiderzee at that time. Vroom did however took some liberties with reality in his painting. He made a few changes to come of the buildings in order to create a more beautifully composed image. Yet his city and seascapes are phenomenal and standing in front of the Hoorn painting is like stepping into the Golden Age. There is the most fantastic attention to detail; the intricate representation of the city, the men in the rigging of the ships and the flags flapping from the masts; Hoorn harbour at its very best. A harbour at the height of its power: a huge herring fleet, whalers, explorers and of course the huge ships bound for the Indies. All of the most important trading companies were to be found in the city. Hoorn had its own mint and an Admiralty Office. Along with Enkhuizen, it was one of the most important cities above the IJ.

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Portrait of Willem van den Kerckhoven and his family Jan

Mijtens, 1652 and 1655, oil on canvas, 134 x 182 cm, inv. no. 1870-0012-SCH, bequeathed to the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag in 1870 and transferred to the Haags Historisch Museum in 1991

Haags Historisch Museum g p. 137

Jan Mijtens (The Hague c. 1614 – The Hague 1670) The Hague portraitist Jan Mijtens stems from a family that has produced many painters. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, this family of artists left its mark in no less than seven European countries. However very little is known about the life of Jan Mijtens. His father, David Mijtens, was a saddler in The Hague. It is assumed that Jan Mijtens received his painting training from his uncles, initially from his uncle Isaac and after 1634 from his uncle Daniel. That year Daniel had returned from England where he was the leading portraitist of Kings James I and Charles I. In 1641 Jan Mijtens married Anna Mijtens, Daniel’s daughter thus his first cousin. Two years previously, Jan had become a member of The Hague Painter’s Guild. In 1654 he was a candidate for the Leader of the Guild but was not appointed. However for many years he was leader of the Confrerie Pictura, founded in 1656 in The Hague. Moreover, it is known that Mijtens served as captain of The Hague civic guard from 1659. A ‘civic guard’ piece from his hand hung in the Sint Sebastiaansdoelen (shooting gallery), the clubhouse of The Hague Civic Guard, until into the eighteenth century, but has unfortunately since been lost. Mijtens’ work is still visible to this day with the presence of the portrait of the Van den Kerckhoven family in the Haags Historisch Museum in the Sint Sebastiaansdoelen. A building in which he himself left many traces. Portrait of Willem van den Kerckhoven and his family. This Hague family portrait is a highlight in Jan Mijtens’ oeuvre that is chiefly characterised by a few dozen family portraits as well as individual portraits. Mijtens always set the figures of his elegant group portraits in a landscape. This would become his trademark. With his refined method of painting, colourful palette and fine eye for detail, Mijtens trod in the footsteps of some other artists who were previously active in The Hague, such as Gerrit van Honthorst and Adriaen Hanneman. Their great example was the elegant portraiture of Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck who, during his short life, worked for diverse European courts and was very influential everywhere. A salient detail here is the departure from London in 1634 of Jan’s uncle Daniel coinciding with the arrival of Van Dyck in London in 1632. Van Dyck became the new court painter of King Charles I and Mijtens’ works paled in comparison. Daniel Mijtens then returned to The Hague where he most probably became the most important teacher to his nephew Jan, who subsequently kept pace with the time and showed

the influence of Van Dyck especially in his elegant portraits. The presence of the Stadholder court and many international prominent people in The Hague is often connected with the development of this ‘Hague’ elegant portraiture, of which Jan Mijtens was a major exponent. His clients came from these higher circles as well as the upper middle classes. Willem van den Kerckhoven (1607-1680) was a Hague lawyer. From 1629 he was a councillor at the Court of Holland and from 1652, the year of this portrait, he was also a counsellor for Amalia van Solms, the widow of Stadholder Frederik Hendrik, and Mary Stuart, widow of Stadholder William II. Mijtens placed Van den Kerckhoven and his wife Rijnburgh de Jonge (1609-1679) under a tree in a landscape in the midst of their ten children. Five cherubs float in the air, symbolising the five children who had died before 1652. The entire family thus totalled fifteen children. At that moment the youngest son had not yet been born. In 1655 Mijtens was commissioned by Van den Kerckhoven to add Pellegrom, the youngest offspring, at the knee of his father. All the family are expensively dressed for which Mijtens chose a combination of contemporary and fantastical clothing. At right the oldest son Melchoir wears fantastical rustic clothes that match the Arcadian character of the landscape. Hence this painting does not concern a realistic rendition of the dunes near Scheveningen. Not all the depicted persons belong to the Van den Kerckhoven family: a black youth leading a horse is depicted in the open space between the two groups. Such pages or manservants, then denoted as ‘Moors’, were regularly depicted in Dutch portraits from the second half of the seventeenth century. This was mostly done to emphasise the social status of the portrait’s subject. Mijtens has provided most of the children with an attribute. Sebastian and Margaretha at far left hold a nautilus shell and a pearl necklace while the brothers Egbert and Adrian hold bunches of grapes. The other children hold flowers and fruit. The Dutch emblematic tradition can lend specific meanings to these various elements. However the use of flowers and fruit in family and child portraits mainly had a general meaning. Fruit can be associated with the fertility of the family and the wife in particular. In addition, just as with flowers, it can be seen as a metaphor for the children’s upbringing. In this magnificent portrait, Mijtens gave expression to the pride of Willem van den Kerckhoven and his wife Rijnburgh de Jonge in their social position and greatest possession, their children.

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Marco van Baalen, director Haags Historisch Museum

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Festoon with flowers and fruit Pieter Gallis, probably from between 1675 and 1685, oil on

panel, 43 x 35 cm; acquired in 2013 with financial assistance from the Rembrandt Association, the Kerkmeijer-de Regt Foundation and the Friends of the Westfries Museum Foundation

Westfries Museum g p. 105

Pieter Gallis (Hoorn 1633 – Hoorn 1697) The Gallis family had simple origins, but in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries became a prominent family in Hoorn. They held positions such as mayor, alderman, director of Levantine Trade, and various offices at the Bank of Loans in Hoorn and Pumerend. In that respect the friendship with mayor and art collector Master Nicolaes van Suchtelen (1656-1715) is worth mentioning. Van Suchtelen had a collection of about a hundred paintings, including fine works by Rootius, Jan Davidsz de Heem and other successful still life painters. This collection must have been a wonderful source of inspiration for Pieter Gallis: countless paintings with elaborately detailed flowers, plants, fruit, insects and butterflies were at his disposal. These paintings would have undoubtedly inspired him in the making of the superb still life Festoon with flowers and fruit. Festoon with flowers and fruit The earliest known work by Gallis dates from 1661. In the 1670s Gallis discovered his strength: the detailed and true-to-nature rendering of flowers and fruit. After 1675 he devoted himself entirely to depictions of festoons with flowers and fruit that filled the entire picture. In Hoorn he was strongly influenced by a few eminent painters: Johannes Bronckhorst, Herman Henstenburgh, Jacob Rootius and Matthias Withoos and his children. All were very successful in the accurate and detailed painting of flowers, plants, insects and fruit. Houbraken mentioned that Pieter Gallis lived for a while in Enkhuizen and returned to Hoorn in 1683, where he was given the position of governor of the Bank of Loans. Houbraken also confirmed that Gallis maintained close contact with fellow painters: ‘... He was a much-loved man, particularly amiable, especially with painters and art lovers...’. Paintings by Pieter Gallis are relatively rare: only thirty flower and fruit still lifes are known. He is largely unknown to the wider public, which is understandable as he painted purely for pleasure. At least so it seems: Arnold Houbraken wrote of Pieter Gallis in his book De Groote Schouburgh (1718-1721): ‘...the good landscape painter, and who exercises Art with passion and no eye to profit...’. Although his work matched his professional contemporaries in every respect, there are no indications that Gallis ever had a formal training. He did however have close contact with many painters in Hoorn and Enkhuizen, and was clearly influenced by well-known painters such as Willem Kalf and Jan Davidsz de Heem. Pieter Gallis evidently did not paint for the art market. This idea is supported by the fact that not one single work has been found in contemporary auction lists. Nor have his works been found in any inventories of households or art collections. Only in the estate of his daughter, Johanna Gallis, are his paintings named. Fifteen paintings by his hand are mentioned there in 1765. Thus the largest part of his oeuvre remained together for a long time after Pieter Gallis’ death in 1697. The family even had a posthumous portrait of the painter made by Nicolaas Verkolje, which can also be found in the collection of the Westfries Museum.

Cees Bakker, curator Westfries Museum

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Ice skating near a Dutch town Andreas Schelfhout, 1857, oil on canvas, 96 x 145 cm

The Rademakers Collection g p. 217 Andreas Schelfhout (The Hague 1787 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; The Hague 1870) Andreas Schelfhout, primarily famous for his delicate winter landscapes, can be considered as a senior member of the Hague painters from the nineteenth century. Like many other Hague artists Schelfhout began his education as a student of decorative painter Joannes Breckenheimer. He was relatively late to emerge as a professional artist. For more than half a century, between 1817 and 1869, he was a regular contributor to the exhibition of Levende Meesters (contemporary masters). Important in his development was his international orientation. In 1824-1825 he journeyed through the Maas valley to the vicinity of Dinant. In 1833 he travelled to Paris and then to Normandy and Brittany. During this journey he encountered work by numerous international artists in Paris and was deeply impressed by the vast and open landscape of the French coast. It is not known exactly when Schelfhout journeyed along the Rhine, and possibly also the Ahr. It was certainly before 1840, as this is when themes reminiscent of the Rhine landscape appear in several of his small paintings. Schelfhout was also interested in the way in which the English artists worked, visiting France and the Rhine, and owned several famous pictures by English artists who had travelled through France and Germany.

Ice skating near a Dutch town

The Rademakers Collection includes two excellent winter landscapes from 1845 and 1857, Frozen waterway from 1845 (ill.) and Ice skating near a Dutch town from 1857. Unlike his seventeenth century predecessors, Schelfhout was primarily interested in the ambience of the empty Dutch landscape. He painted richly furnished winter landscapes only a few times. The monumental piece from 1857 is a wonderful example of such an exception. The painting presents, entirely in keeping with the tradition of seventeenth century predecessors like Hendrik Avercamp, the ultimate of Dutch fun on the ice. The spire of a village church is visible between the trees to the left; on the right, on the opposite bank of the canal is a town with a mill, a large church with a spire and a smaller one without. The inhabitants of both village and town seem to have come together on this beautiful winter day to enjoy themselves on the ice. Two â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;koek-en-zopiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; at a refreshment stall help the people to defy the freezing cold. A clever merchant has erected a reed mat near the shack in the foreground to protect against the wind. Behind it stands a table holding several bottles. His skates hang over the side of the shack. He is pouring a drink for an exhausted man, who sits on a bench, fighting Frozen waterway, 1845 the cold. To the right hangs a kettle over the fire, undoubtedly full of hot chocolate. Next to the tent is a group of people standing and sitting, immersed in conversation. People are swaying everywhere on the ice, with wooden skates tied under their shoes; there is a festive mood in the air. The buildings and trees on the left of the image serve as a repoussoir, giving depth to the icy landscape. The painting exudes freezing temperatures, as only Schelfhout can achieve. This also explains why Schelfhout, throughout his whole long life, could never meet the demand for his paintings; they were so highly coveted.

Guido de Werd, director Museum Haus Koekkoek and senior-curator Museum Kurhaus Kleve

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Café terrace at night (Place du Forum) Vincent van Gogh,

c. 16 September 1888, oil on canvas, 80.7 x 65.3 cm; F467, KM 108.565 Kröller-Müller Museum The Kröller-Müller Museum in De Hoge Veluw National Park is named after its founder Helene Kröller-Müller. Advised by the art educator H.P. Bremmer, in the early twentieth century she amassed a leading art collection, centered around drawings and paintings by Vincent van Gogh, that was displayed in a museum the Kröllers commissioned from the Belgian Architect Henry van de Velde. The museum was opened in 1939. The private collection turned into a national museum. The 1950s saw the birth of an international collection of modern sculpture. In 1977 the museum extended with an exhibition wing, storage facilities and a new entrance, designed by architect Wim Quist. The sculpture garden dates from 1961 and was extended in 1965 and 2001. Museum and sculpture garden form a much praised 25 acres ensemble, embedded in of surrounding nature. g p. 505

Vincent van Gogh (Zundert 1853 – Auvers-sur-Oise, Fr, 1890) g p. 273, 297

Café terrace at night (Place du Forum)1 Already in Nuenen Van Gogh had been intrigued by the problem of painting at night or in the dark. In a letter to Wil, his youngest sister, of 16 September 1888, in which he described the café terrace, he explained that painters usually only drew at night, waiting for daylight to work up paintings after their drawings. He, however, did not care for this approach: he wanted to work at night directly on canvas and on the spot. Obviously this is not easy. Not only do natural colours look different in nocturnal twilight than they do in daylight, but the colours on the palette and the canvas also come across differently, so that the next day the result can look very different indeed. Little is known on how Van Gogh solved this problem. According to one of his early biographers, Gustave Coquiot, Van Gogh wore a hat with burning candles on its brim, a conjecture which is unconfirmed by the letters but was nevertheless adopted by various researchers. The theory is an improbable one, however. Even if Van Gogh had been indifferent to the eccentric impression he would have made, the unavoidable dripping of candle wax would have hindered him in his painting. Van Gogh probably worked by the light of a gas lamp, and if he had placed his easel at an angle to this scene on the terrace of the café – as opposed directly in front of it – he would have had sufficient light from the gas lamp of the terrace itself. It was not for the first time that Van Gogh had worked at night. On 8 September he wrote to his brother that he had stayed up for three nights to paint the interior of The night café by lamp light, remarking at the time that the night often

seemed to him ‘more alive and more richly coloured’ than the day. In the days before or around 16 September he then painted the exterior of a café on the Place du Forum, where he had been at the beginning of September with his artist friend Eugène Bloch, probably making a drawing (by daylight) at that time. He reported to Wil that he was especially pleased with the painting’s colour scheme: ‘An enormous yellow lantern sheds its light on the terrace, the house front and the sidewalk, and even casts a certain brightness on the paving stones in the street, which take on a violet-pink hue. The façades of the houses on the street, which runs along under the blue, star-filled sky, are dark blue or violet with a green tree. Here you have a nocturnal scene without any black, only beautiful blue and violet and green, and in these surroundings the lighted square acquires a pale sulphur yellow, greenish, citron yellow colour. I take a great deal of pleasure in painting on the spot at night. […] Of course it’s true that in the dark I may mistake blue for green, blue-lilac for pink-lilac, for you cannot easily distinguish the quality of a hue. But it is the only way to do away at last with that conventional black night with that poor, pale whitish light, whereas just a simple candle produces the richest hues of yellow and orange.’ (681/W7) Van Gogh was, however, just as intrigued by the starry night as by gas light. Already in April 1888 he had expressed to Bernard his hope of painting a starry sky, and in October he resolved, if he were ever to return to Paris, to paint the ‘gas light effect on the boulevard’. Nothing ever came of this, though. He painted his Starry night over the Rhone at the end of September ‘at night by the light of a gas lamp’, and the starry nights done in Saint-Rémy were painted indoors from imagination. In this, the first starry night of his oeuvre, he combined both motifs in order to contrast the warm light of the gas lamp on the terrace with the deep blue of the star-spangled nocturnal sky: ‘I think that lots of gas light, which is, after all, yellow and orange, heightens the blue’, he wrote Theo on 10 October 1888. The whole exudes the carefree atmosphere of a sultry summer evening, in stark contrast to the night café interior, with which he wanted to convey the feeling that the café is a place ‘where you can ruin yourself, go mad, commit crimes’.

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Jos ten Berge, lecturer art history Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

1 catalogue text ‘Paintings by Vincent van Gogh in the Kröller-Müller Museum’, Otterlo 2003, pp. 238-241

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Alba / Morning Pier Pander, 1896, executed in marble by

Ernesto Gazzeri (1866-1965), Carrara marble, h 145 x w 28 x d 28 cm; inventory number GKL001002381 Pier Pander Museum and Temple The Prinsentuin, Leeuwarden’s public park, houses the museum and the temple devoted to the Frisian sculptor Pier Pander. After his death Pander’s studio collection was bequeathed to the Leeuwarden City Council, with the provision that a museum for his collection would be erected. In 1924, four years after his death, his life’s work, a group of statues in a temple, was opened on the Noorderbolwerk in the Prinsentuin. The Pier Pander Museum was opened in 1954 after much delay. The Historisch Centrum Leeuwarden (HCL) has curated the Pier Pander Museum and the Temple since 2007. The HCL is Leeuwarden’s local heritage centre and not only administers the city and regional archives but also the Oldehove, Pier Pander Museum and the Temple. The HCL falls under the Leeuwarden City Council.

Pier Pander (Drachten 1864 – Rome, It, 1919)

Pier Pander was born in 1864 in Drachten as the youngest son of a poor Frisian ship captain. At an early age Pander proved to have a talent for making superb carved wood works. The financial support from a few generous patrons enabled him to study in Amsterdam and thereafter in Paris. After winning the Prix de Rome in 1885 Pier Pander finally settled in Rome where he grew to become a celebrated artist. Pander became well known, especially for the design of a likeness of Queen Wilhelmina for the Dutch coin struck on the occasion of her inauguration in 1898. Pier Pander Temple Pander’s idea for a statue group arose in the years between 1892 and 1895. He began the work in 1895 and continued until his death in 1919. Shortly before his death Pander asked his Italian colleague Ernesto Gazzeri to execute the five plaster models in Carrara marble. The statue group is an allegory on the creative power of the artist. The representation of this creative power begins with the relief above the Temple door with its title Dawn or Aurora depicting the morning, and ‘the light that rises and illuminates’. Inside there are five life-size marble statues standing in an open circle. At the centre on a high pedestal, stands Morning. The work stemmed from this pristine thought – the inspiration. Flanking Morning on slightly lower pedestals stand Emotion and Thought, both of which arise from inspiration. Courage and Strength, required for realising the statue, stand slightly lower still. The beholder, standing even lower, completes the work. The position of the statues in the Temple, with its subtle light fall, is intended to let the beholder feel the infinity of the creative process. Pander asked the advice of the architect Joan Melchior

van der Mey (1878-1949) for the design because he had no understanding of the architectural aspects. Van der Mey was a noted architect who acquired a reputation as the designer of the Scheepvaarthuis in Amsterdam and as founder of the Amsterdam School. Nico de Koo (1881-1960), a friend and an interior architect, advised Pander on the colour scheme. The atmosphere should have something ‘a little pious, a little religious’. He wanted a warm colour on the walls and chose stained leadglass windows for a sunny effect. The plasterwork on the cupola and pillars was painted warm yellow. The entrance and wall of the tambour were painted blue-purple so that the statues would stand out sharply against it. Alba / Morning In 1896 the statue Alba or Morning was the first statue of the group completed. The awakening girl figure has an inwardly directed expression, as if she is studying her inner self. The arms hang loosely at the sides of her delicate body. The statue is the personification of the soul, the creative force. Later Pander changed the name Alba to Morning, a virginal girl that ‘even motionless, was the unconscious basis’ of the other forces. Pander: ‘Alba should express the innocent ignorance of Nature, in particular of human nature, from where all things come to light’. In 1895 the writer Louis Couperus (1863-1923) visited Pier Pander’s studio in Rome for the first time. Pander was working on the clay model of Alba at the time. The statuette made a great impression on Couperus and inspired him to write the sonnet series Alba (1903), which he dedicated to Pander. Couperus described his first acquaintance with the statuette in his book Metamorfoze. Jan Toorop (1858-1928) designed the book’s binding, inspired by the passage in which Couperus described how the Fedder character (Pander) removed the moist swathing from the clay model of Alba.

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Janneke Visser, coordinator Pier Pander Museum / City Council Art Collection

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Row of eleven poplars in red Piet Mondrian, 1907-1908,

69 x 112 cm, oil on canvas; collection Museum de Fundatie Zwolle and Heino/Wijhe, acquired by Dirk Hannema Museum de Fundatie Museum de Fundatie owns and manages an extensive and diverse art collection of both fine and applied arts from the Middle Ages to the present. Masterpieces include works by Bernardo Strozzi, William Turner, Vincent van Gogh, Piet Mondrian, Marino Marini, Jan Cremer, Jan Fabre and many others. Dirk Hannema, former director of the Museum Boymans in Rotterdam and founder of the Hannema-De Stuers Fundatie, amassed the core of the collection. In addition to later acquisitions by the museum, the collection has been expanded by the art collection of the Province of Overijssel that includes a large number of works from the painter-collector Paul Citroen’s collection, and by bequests and donations from private collectors. The Museum’s collection and its changing exhibitions can be seen at two locations: the Paleis a/d Blijmarkt in Zwolle and Kasteel het Nijenhuis in Heino. Het Nijenhuis also has a sculpture garden with about eighty works, some originating are from the Museum Beelden aan Zee collection in The Hague. Piet Mondrian is represented with four paintings in the Museum de Fundatie collection: three landscapes and one portrait. A landscape entitled Pool near Saasveld of circa 1907 is the earliest work. Row of eleven poplars in red is from 1908. Both were made in the Netherlands. The other two works, On the bank of a river and Portrait of a woman with yellow hat were made during Mondrian’s Paris years, that is, the period 1912-1938. These paintings have been dated to around 1930, based on stylistic similarities with his other late figurative works. Pool near Saasveld came to the museum through a long-term loan and Hannema himself acquired the remaining paintings. Hannema’s choice is interesting in that he purchased none of Mondrian’s abstract works. From 1912 on, influenced by French Cubism, Mondrian developed the Neoplasticism with its black lines and red, yellow, blue or white rectangles. Although the rising prices of this abstract work, in particular after Mondrian’s death in 1944, could have played a role in Hannema’s purchases, the rest of his collection shows that he was no enthusiast of totally abstract art. Hannema was not conservative, as his notably early interest for Cobra indicates, but he was unconventional and thought that visual art ought to have a relationship with visible reality. g p. 521

development. Landscapes made prior to 1908 stand more or less in the tradition of the Hague School, which dominated in the Netherlands in the second half of the nineteenth century and was fully accepted by the turn of the century. Meanwhile in France a truly revolutionary change in painting had taken place. Avant-garde artists no longer represented the world as a spatial construction, but attempted to give their impressions basic form by focussing on light and colour. The more intuitive Impressionism of around 1880, by painters like Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, was followed by the almost scientific Pointilism of painters such as Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. A similar painting style arose in Belgium and the Netherlands and was designated with the term ‘Luminism’. Shortly before 1900 it was Jan Toorop who was the first in the Netherlands to experiment with the optical mixing of colours by setting them on the canvas next to each other, using separate brushstrokes. The emphasis on light and colour in Row of eleven poplars in red shows that Mondrian chose a new direction, which he once described as ‘the ascending way, away from material’: The painting forms the transition between his traditional landscapes and his Luminist work. In 1908 he saw the pulsating scenes that Toorop had painted in the Zeeland seaside resort of Domburg, after which he went to Zeeland himself to paint in the Luminist manner. Mondrian started his Row of eleven poplars in red with mostly brown and green tones, but in this period he painted them over with many brighter colours. Blue, red and yellow play the main role, but the green is also greener than before. This intervention certainly diminished the illusion of space, but the feeling of a warm summer evening at the riverside is precisely reinforced. In fact, here Mondrian declares that he no longer wishes to express the material world but the spiritual. Row of eleven poplars in red thus already leans towards his abstract work of post 1912, with which he would posthumously become world famous.

Piet Mondrian (Amersfoort 1892 – New York, US, 1944) g p. 361, 473

Row of eleven poplars in red The expressive and colourful Row of eleven poplars in red is generally regarded as a key work in Piet Mondrian’s artistic

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Ralph Keuning, director Museum de Fundatie

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Winter landscape with ditch Jan Mankes, 1913, 31 x 43 cm;

acquired in 2012 with financial support from the OttemaKingma Foundation and the Rembrandt Association

Museum Belvédère Sited on the edge of the historic landscape park of Oranjewoud, Museum Belvédère opened in 2004. The austere structure, neat spacious layout and scenic location contrasts strongly with many other museums in the Netherlands. The low, elongated rectangular building – designed by architect Eerde Schippers – is fully tailored to the rectangular structure of the museum park – designed by landscape architect Michael van Gessel. The museum with its compact presence and position over the long water marks the visual entrance to the historic country estate of Oranjewoud.Hence the museum building forms a link between past and present, and, at the same time, between nature and culture. Museum Belvédère focuses on modern and contemporary art from 1900 onwards with a special interest for the work of Frisian artists. The museum aims to be a haven for Frisian and Northern Netherlands artists and strives to exhibit their

landscapes from that time, such as a road stretching from fore- to background and wandering figures, in this winter landscape he created a definite physical distancing. He realised this effect by dividing the fore- and middle ground with a ditch running parallel to the horizon. While the viewer can imagine to participate in the depictions of other landscapes, here they know they are positioned outside the painting and are allowed only the view. A view that lets the eye reach low over the white snowy earth to the horizon, which is placed markedly high in the picture plane. The individual shapes are subtly traced out and set apart in the composition. Taken together, they seem to represent the stillness and chill of the time of year. But this curious distribution of apparently independent motifs – the two heaps of twigs in the foreground, the two haystacks in the middle ground and the three bare trees at upper left – seems mainly to evoke a feeling of total abandonment. People are entirely absent in this bleak wintry landscape where the crows are all alone. The beholder knows he is positioned ‘off screen’; only his eyes can wander over the snowy fields from ‘this side’. In their relationship with the represented space, he also knows he is thrown back on himself and the emotions summoned up by the still landscape.

work in relation to work by kindred spirits from home and abroad. The museum collection is divided into four distinct main groups, all built around the work of Jan Mankes, Thijs Rinsema, Gerrit Benner and Sjoerd de Vries. g p. 417, 601 Jan Mankes (Meppel 1889 – Eerbeek 1920) After a stay in Delft, in 1909 the Mankes family settled in the Frisian village of De Knipe, nearby the present-day Museum Belvédère. In 1915 Jan Mankes married Annie Zernike, the first Dutch female incumbent. The same year they took up residence in Eerbeek. In 1916 the first symptoms of tuberculosis appeared, the illness from which he finally died in 1920. In his Frisian years Mankes was inspired by distant horizons, rows of trees and the animals he encountered around the farmyard of his parental home. His painstaking manner of setting down his observations in drawings, prints and paintings not only shows his concentrated focus upon his subjects, but especially also his aim to reveal the greater truth concealed in nature. Mankes became proficient in a sensitive, sometimes ethereal-like realism that touches on the North European painting arts of the fifteenth century. Winter landscape with ditch The painting Winter landscape with ditch is one of the most important landscapes Jan Mankes made in his Frisian years. It was painted in 1913 in the vicinity of where the museum is located. Although the location has not been determined precisely, the panoramic view with the windmills and farmhouses does correspond with the former topographical situation between Oranjewoud and De Knipe. While Mankes made use of suggestive motifs in other

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Han Steenbruggen, director and curator Museum Belvédère

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Kirchner in studio Jan Wiegers, 1925, oil on canvas, 69 x 89 cm; acquired with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt and the Stichting De Groot-Brugmans

Groninger Museum g p. 225

Jan Wiegers (Kommerzijl 1893 – Amsterdam 1959) and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (Aschaffenburg, D, 1880 – Davos, CH, 1938) Mynheer Peeperkorn, an important figure of doubtful reputation in Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel Der Zauberberg, was not the first Dutchman in Davos. By the nineteenth century, the Swiss spa town of Graubünden was well established as a much loved destination for lung patients from the Low Countries. The Dutch Sanatorium that opened in Davos in 1897 is today know as the Nederlands Astmacentrum. In 1920 a German painter and Dutch painter met in Davos; they were both seeking rest and health. It was a meeting of great significance for the history of art. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, the most important representative of German Expressionism, had moved to the spa town in 1917. He had already painted his most important work, prior to the start of the First World War in Dresden en Berlin (p. 430, 431). Along with his fellow artists in the Die Brücke collective, he had exhibited a great deal of his work, but very little of it sold and his uncouth way of painting had attracted a great deal of criticism. His search for a refuge, far away from urban life, was part of an artistic tradition; Van Gogh had fled to Provence, Gauguin to an island in the South Pacific. Jan Wiegers travelled from Groningen to Davos three years later in 1920. He did not plan to relocate permanently; he was there to recover from a problem with his lungs. It seems that Wiegers quickly sought out Kirchner, being familiar with his work. In 1912 he had seen the legendary Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne, which included three new paintings by Kirchner who was living in Berlin at the time. The art shown in the Cologne exhibition included more than six hundred works, so overwhelming that it couldn’t be held against Wiegers that he was unable to decide upon a direction in which to develop his own style. The First World War subsequently disrupted German-Dutch art connections; the neutral country finding itself isolated. It must have been wonderful to witness Kirchner and Wiegers meeting each other and it seems that matters quickly turned to art. We don’t know when and where they met for the first time and, unfortunately, their written correspondence has been lost. The younger artist clearly looked up to the elder at the start of their friendship, however things soon became more equal between them. Kirchner did not feel that his Dutch colleague was dependant upon him, as is clear from a note he placed in the Davoser Zeitung: ’Artist Kirchner of Frauenkirch announces

in relation to the art notice placed in edition 219 (October 1920) that the artist Jan Wiegers named in said notice […] is not his pupil, but his friend.’ It was a necessary correction, as Wiegers had completed his education and was already a mature artist as well as a mature personality. Yet, the thirteen-year older German did have more influence on the younger Dutchman than was the case in reverse. Wiegers’ shift in style was immediate and can primarily be seen in his sketches. Kirchner’s style had lost its sharp edges during his time in Switzerland and had become softer – in terms of the lines and contours more than anything else; the colours remained rich in contrast, always mocking naturalistic rules. Apart from taking a more courageous approach to the blank canvas, Kirchner also offered Wiegers new technical skills and he practised using wax paint as an alternative to oil. Back in Groningen, Wiegers soon introduced his artist friends, part of the De Ploeg collective, to what he had seen and learnt. His input resulted in a whole new drive in artistic production in the north of the country. Five years later, Wiegers returned to Davos, looking forward to reuniting with his German colleague. In 1925 the two painters produced the famous portraits that they created of each other. Kirchner in studio The painting by Wiegers contains a wealth of information to be found in the tangle of contrasting colours. The subject of the piece has angular features, referring to a later throw of naturalism or to the ‘classical’ expressionistic style of painting. Kirchner is smoking a pipe. Kirchner is painting with both hands at the same time! He isn’t sitting on a stool, but in an armchair; possibly a reference to Van Gogh’s portrait of his colleague Gauguin, personified as a chair? The canvas he is using is on the small side and behind it we can see a fragment of a larger piece that experts have identified as being Bacchanale im Raum. Back in Groningen Wiegers added the two joined heads. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner also painted a portrait of his friend in 1925, Holländer Maler Jan Wiegers. It is now in the collection of the Kirchner Museum in Davos. The romantic tradition of friendship portraits is reflected in this modern precedent of the expression of international friendship between artists.

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Andreas Blühm, director Groninger Museum

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Victory Boogie Woogie Piet Mondrian, 1942-1944, oil paint,

tape, paper, black chalk on canvas,127.5 x 127.5 cm; collection Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, permanent loan to the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag

Gemeentemuseum Den Haag g p. 241, 529

Piet Mondrian g p. 353, 361

Victory Boogie Woogie, This work hangs in the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag as an impressive monument to New York, to the vitality of the city that repeatedly recreates itself: Victory Boogie Woogie by Piet Mondrian, painted in the free world in the last year of the Second World War. This painting can truly be said to be a monument. A work above all that is surrounded with the enigma of a brilliant artist. The image of the artist as genius arose with Romanticism. And the unfinished artwork – unvollendete Fritz Glarner, Studio Piet Mondrian after his death with ‘Victory Boogie Woogie’, February – contributes to the mythologizing. For 1944, Kunsthaus Zürich an unfinished artwork suggests more than the start of a magisterial work, the spark of genius that could not reach ignition and which we can never know how it would have appeared if finished. As with this painting. It is Mondrian’s last work, left unfinished on the easel in his studio after his death (ill.). Victory Boogie Woogie is bold. Mondrian rotated the square 90 degrees to form a lozenge, which makes the 127.5 cm wide painting look larger. The ‘wallpower’ of the work is huge. But that is not only due to the shape. The painting seems to dance. It has a great vitality. What makes this canvas dance, or to use Mondrian’s terms, why does it make music? Rhythm. Mondrian was very talented, but above all he made the best compositions of the twentieth century. The composition is the result of a quest. The work was thus not created after lengthy preliminary studies but grew as it were under his hands. Mondrian laid the canvas on the table and walked around it. Created between 1942 and 1944 when he had passed seventy years of age, he had found a new way with this work. He said of Broadway Boogie Woogie (ill.), made before Victory, ‘There is too much old in the new’. That is to say, there is still too much of the old in the new work method. The ‘old’ here refers to the paintings he had previously made in Europe. With Victory he succeeded, for the first time and regrettably also the last, to take a new path and to break free from his past works. Mondrian eliminated all lines. The composition is free and asymmetrical. The classical order is absent and in its place Mondrian has managed to make a painting that seems

to move before our eyes. It swings. As if he has depicted the wild, cheerful rhythm of boogie-woogie music. We see a few blocks in a certain rhythmic unity that are fully connected or cross over each other. Thus are rhythm and the suggestion of movement created. Many of the vertically placed blocks are somewhat larger which gives a heavier effect like the bass in a piece of music. The horizontal blocks are much smaller and follow each other more quickly, like a staccato. Paintings like these are only seldom made. And the work also acquired a mythical status immediately after the death of Mondrian. It is the only international masterpiece of which copies have been made, and not only that, commissioned by prominent museums. Victory Boogie Woogie was made in the first half of the twentieth century, yet still looks radiant and fresh, as if made yesterday. Tellingly, this work is also known as The Night Watch of the twenty-first century.

Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-1943, oil on canvas, 127 x 127 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Benno Tempel, director Gemeentemuseum Den Haag

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Random pattern with dots 108 (V71-108) herman de vries, 1971, ink on paper, 71.9 x 101.9 cm;

long-term loan from the collection of the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands

Mondriaanhuis In addition to work by Mondrian and his contemporaries, the collection of the Mondriaanhuis also contains objects by followers of Mondrian. This group includes work by abstract artists such as Carel Visser, Jan Schoonhoven and herman de vries. The latter two were fellow founders of the Nul movement in 1960, the Dutch branch of the German Zero movement. The concept of ‘followers’ must be taken broadly. They can be artists indebted on an aesthetic level, or artists whose theories and visions have similarities to those of Mondrian. Random pattern with spots 108 (V71-1-8) is best placed in the first category. de vries’ extreme preference for geometric abstraction at that moment in his career is comparable with that of Mondriaan, although de vries is evidently less rigorous than his predecessor.1 g p. 361 herman de vries (Alkmaar 1931) herman de vries began his career path as a farm worker and botanist, not as an artist. This background has had a great influence on his work. He was introduced to the statistical approach to natural phenomena during his job at the Plant Pathology Department at the University of Wageningen.2 The computer systems that made it possible to reduce nature to facts and figures had a great influence on de vries’ artistry, especially in the beginning. These computer systems produce Random Objectivications, a type of work that takes shape in various ways. The visual elements are arranged randomly in reliefs, printed matter, or, as in the case of Random pattern with dots 108 (V71-108), as prints. Random pattern with dots 108 (V71-108) Random pattern with dots 108 (V71-108) is based on a table of random figures that de vries has also used for random sampling in his work as a botanist. These figures, chosen at random, determine the position of the dots on the paper. In this way, chance directs his work, and will continue to do so for the rest of his oeuvre. Unlike the Dadaists for example, de vries uses chance here by starting with statistical data in a strictly ordered or even clinical way. de vries sees certainties as phenomena invented by man, but in fact they are non-existent. All depends on chance and derives the right to exist from chance. While the work of de vries and Mondrian are comparable on an aesthetic level through the radical abstraction that characterises both, the starting points are very different. In his work Mondrian sought the truth concealed in the natural appearance of things. This led to compositions with blocks of colour in primary colours, bordered by straight lines. de vries is also occupied with nature in his work, but sees this as the true manifestation and strives to express this in his art. Where Mondrian was involved in sketching a timeless picture of the truth behind nature, de vries shows precisely the transience of things by depicting nature directly. Above all, Mondrian destroyed nature on behalf of truth, while de vries celebrates nature in all its glory as truth.

Marjory Degen, assistant curator Mondriaanhuis Amersfoort After making this type of work, de vries will soon be focussing on nature and objects found in nature. For herman de vries’ CV, go to http://www.hermandevries.org/bio-timeline.php , for more information, see Daniel van der Poel, ‘Unity’ (exhibition catalogue, Kröller Müller Museum), 2009. 1

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Naomi Marlene Dumas, 1995, oil on canvas, 130 x 110 cm;

acquired in 1995 De Heus-Zomer Collection Henk de Heus and Victoria de Heus-Zomer have been collecting art since 1989. The De Heus-Zomer Collection has grown over the years to become one of the largest and loveliest collections of modern art in the Netherlands. The collection contains paintings, photographs and sculptures by Dutch, Chinese and German artists. Select items from the collection have recently be exhibited in Singer Laren, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (Rotterdam) and Museum Belvédère (Heerenveen). Marlene Dumas (Cape Tow, SA, 1953) Marlene Dumas came to the Netherlands in 1976 to study at the Ateliers 63 studio in Haarlem. After completing her studies, she moved to Amsterdam, where she still lives and works. Her work often references historical art motives as well as modern political themes. Dumas is inspired by photographs from a range of media from her massive archive of images and she claims that all of these images influence the way in which we see each other and the world around us. Producing paintings that, even in a world dominated by visual cultures, can be relevant and modern. g p. 649

to leave extra ears behind for them. In turn Naomi aimed to marry Ruth and Boaz. Boaz managed to acquire Elimelech’s old land by buying up the rights held by others. Thus he bought back the possessions of the proud Naomi and could marry Ruth. This marriage produced a son from whom King David and ultimately Jesus would descend. Marlene Dumas was surprised to hear from Victoria de Heus that she associated her Naomi with the biblical Naomi. Eventually she thought it an interesting interpretation, befitting the portrait. Religious subject matter is not unusual in her work: ’I use religious subjects as I use fairy-tale figures, in order to give my audience an easy starting point, a popular reverence that relates to all times and that is familiar to most people.’ The religious subject matter in Dumas’ work can also be found in Jesus Serene (p. 670, 671) from the De Heus-Zomer collection, a series of male portraits based on portrayals of Christ over the centuries. Those looking deeper can recognise among them the artists Rob Birza and Jan Cremer. Thus well-known contemporary artists are placed in a religious context. As also a top model can be used to represent a biblical namesake.

Naomi In 1995 Shell showed a commercial featuring Naomi Campbell: the now famous liquid gold ad. The haughty expression of the top model was that very year the inspiration for Marlene Dumas’ Naomi. Henk and Victoria de Heus-Zomer saw the painting, but were unaware of the existence of a Naomi Campbell. At once Victoria linked the haughty expression with the biblical Naomi who figures in the Book of Ruth. Naomi and her family – husband Elimelech and their two sons – immigrated to Moab to escape a famine in Judea. Naomi’s sons married Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. Elimelech and her sons died, leaving Naomi, Ruth and Orpah to fare for themselves. The three decided to travel to Judea at the end of the famine. On the way, Naomi changed her mind and directed her daughters-in-law to return to Moab to build a new life there. Ruth refused, ‘for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God’. Deeply touched, Naomi thought she could better change her name (Naomi means ‘my lovely’) to Mara, meaning ‘bitter’. Boaz, a distant relative of Elimelech, lived in Bethlehem where he owned land on which grain was grown. According to custom the ears left behind after the harvest could be gathered by the poor – so-called gleaning. Naomi and Ruth had permission to glean on Boaz’s land and Boaz even instructed his workers

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Generation #3 Ruud van Empel, 2010, Cibachrome, 124 x 330 cm; acquisition 2010

Art Service Foundation - FSGroep The Foundation is an initiative of Han R. De Groot, founder and chair of the FSGroep. The Art Service Foundation aims to bring together modern and contemporary art. The collection is permanently displayed in Hilversum at the headquarters of the FSGroep, a service provider for temporary staffing agencies. Ruud van Empel (Breda 1958) Ruud van Empel, graduate of the Academy for Art and Design St. Joost in Breda, is one of the most talked-about artists of the moment, as underscored by solo exhibitions in museums and galleries in Europe, the United States and Asia, and participation in many group exhibitions in leading museums. In late 2011 the Groninger Museum presented a major overview of his work that was later to be seen at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego (US), the FotoMuseum Antwerp (B), Fotografiska in Stockholm (SE), Het Noordbrabants Museum in ’s-Hertogenbosch, and elsewhere. Ruud van Empel lives and works in Amsterdam. Generation #3 The photorealistic work of Ruud van Empel, built up from hundreds of fragments from different photos he takes himself, is as complex as it is idyllic. The initial impression is a picture of a nostalgic fantastic world in which children, often young, in timeless pullovers, little suits and perfectly trimmed hair gaze directly into the lens with a mixture of pride and shyness. But the creation of this imaginary world has something odd about it and sometimes even a sinister undertone. The beauty, the improbably bright colours and fine detail are compelling. The atmosphere is deliberately alienating, through which we feel that innocence has made way for hard realism. Even transience threatens, for the position of man on Earth is at issue. Thirty-five children are ‘portraited’ in the large work Generation #3, and in straight lines, just like in Van Empel’s old school classes. In this work they are Jewish, but this is not always apparent; some wear a yarmulke, some do not. Freedom of speech and religion is a good thing; that is what Ruud van Empel seems to be saying. However, the paradise that he once knew when life still seemed simple seems today to have been lost; the true, manipulated artificiality we see is what has become real.

Fiona van Schendel, Flatland Gallery Amsterdam

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The Keyhole Erwin Olaf, 2011-2012, installation with 10

Museum Arnhem The Museum Arnhem is mainly known for its Dutch Neorealism, post-war figuration and contemporary art collections reflecting the themes of gender, non-Western art and social engagement. The common thread in the shaping of the collection is Realism as an art historical movement and a representation of social reality. Sometimes the unique chance arises that one artwork embodies all these aspects. The Keyhole by Erwin Olaf is such a work. g p. 457

their back to the viewer. They seem to be turning away from us in shame, except for one man. Before the two doors stands a chair that invites the visitor to sit and peer through the keyhole. The instant the visitor does, he becomes a part of the installation. He looks through the keyhole and sees a film showing a bedroom containing a cupboard, a bed and a still life on the wall. A pyjama-clad man sits on the bed with a boy on his lap wearing underwear. Through the keyhole at the other end of the installation is a similar scene, but with a woman and a boy (p. 787). The Keyhole depicts charged social situations and abuses, but also lets the viewer reflect upon their own way of looking and interpreting. Do we see what we think we see? And why do we think we see that? What do the images arouse in us? ‘It’s in the eye of the beholder’, says the artist.

Erwin Olaf (Hilversum 1959) Erwin Olaf has an impressive oeuvre that in recent years has shown an extraordinary strengthening of quality, subject choice and techniques. His work is very varied and comprises advertising photography, fashion photography, non-commission photography and films; summed up by dozens of national

Unusually, Olaf is seeking painterly qualities by means of photography. He resumes the popular pre-war genres of portrait, still life and interior, and stage-manages until every detail and every pose is well balanced. The light fall he also directs like a painter. He is able to use photography to have the models express universal emotions in his photos

and international publications, exhibitions around the world and works collected by museums, corporations and private persons. Until fairly recently, Erwin Olaf’s work was mainly prized for his quirky choice of models whom he photographed in imaginative, often theatrical and minutely-detailed staged scenes. His inexhaustible inspiration is the human form in all its beauty, but also in its sometimes grotesque imperfections. In the jury report of the Johannes Vermeer Award, the Dutch national award for the arts that Olaf received in 2011, his work was described as follows: ‘With his photographs, Olaf wants to create a world in which his imagination takes the lead. He can provoke, shock, move, radiate comfort or resignation, but this is always in the context of an optimal aesthetic quality.’ His work of more recent years is characterized by a certain introspection expressed in modest subjects and a restrained style. The series Rain (2004), Hope (2005), Grief (2007), Fall (2008), Dusk (2009), Dawn (2009) and Hotel (2010) are a large-scale visual research into the reproduction of human emotions such as hope, loneliness and isolation. The staging often consists of one or two models in a space, usually a room, designed with great detail and a strong sense of atmosphere. He directs the placement of the model in the space and the styling of clothing and interior to the tiniest detail. The lighting is soft and evenly balanced. In these works Olaf nears one of his greatest artistic desires: to be able to work like a painter.

in a very subtle and original way. In addition, the styling of the interiors matches the period to which he wants to refer: furniture, clothing and interior all seem to have come directly from the 1930s. Erwin Olaf is not only fascinated visually by the interbellum period but also by its content. He sees important relationships between the 1920s and 1930s and our present time. Hence The Keyhole fits perfectly in the collection of the Museum Arnhem.

photos, two videos and audio, 220 x 251 x 606 cm; purchased 2012 with financial support from the Mondriaan Foundation and the BankGiro Loterij

The Keyhole The Keyhole is Olaf’s first space-filling installation. The work consists of an oval room with a door at each narrow end. The slightly curved walls have wooden panelling and bear ten portraits of men, women and children in a bowed posture,

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Miriam Windhausen, head of the collections and exhibitions department Museum Arnhem