Gerharda Hermina Marius

“ In a picture such as Mournings despite the fine expression of sorrow, despite the fine sentiment that places the sobbing woman bending forward against the rosy, utterly unconscious child, we are struck by the fact that this sorrow does not, as it would have done were the picture painted by Israëls, permeate the whole figure, the fall of the folds of the woman's dress, the fall of the light, every detail of the apartment, which would have been dramatized as it were in and through the human tragedy ”

“ His training, like Thérèse Schwartze's, was quite foreign to the ideas existing at the Hague. And he excels rather as an academic draughtsman than as a powerful painter, so that it would appear as if the building up of a head or the oudine of a hand never cost him the slightest trouble. ”

“ Toewater, the advocate, are doubtless the most powerful. The whole construction of the first, the heavy head, shaded by a soft black hat with a broad brim, lighted with Rembrandt effects, brisk in colour, excellent in attitude, square and stately, points to the quickness of comprehension which is one of this painter's foremost qualities. ”

“ For that matter, at Laren too and especially in his little kitchen-gardens this painter showed great merit.
Though Bisschop's conception of the interior is not related in respect of artlessness and not at all in that of the joy of life with the pictures of the old "little masters," neither was his conception that of Israëls or of Jacob Maris. It is true that he gave a portrait of the old Hinlopen life, a peinture des mœurs of the old popular life in Friesland, of everyday happenings in the household, but he failed to expand it into something generally human. ”

“ He is a skilful painter, who achieved the full measure of his talent at an early age, making a name, when only twenty-five, with a snow-piece, A January Day, now in the Amsterdam Municipal Museum.
A more powerful figure is Theophile de Bock, born at the Hague in 1851. Although he was a pupil of Van Borselen and Weissenbruch, he began by painting important landscapes, inspired by Corot, and afterwards passed over to Jacob Maris, with whose palette, as it were, he painted some quiet pools, conceived in a virile manner. ”

“ And, whereas, before, she was reproached with being able to paint only men's portraits, that is to say character-portraits, since this period she has shown, in a series of charming portraits of women and children, that pastel is a very beautiful medium in which to make the fleeting, evanescent, pale qualities of a woman's face tell against the brilliancy of the white silks or muslins in which she prefers to array her sitters. ”

“ The Hague School: Sequel
Albert Neuhuijs, Blommers and Artz followed the example of Israëls and infused new life into our art of genre-painting.
Neuhuijs belongs to the school of Israëls in his choice of subjects and to that of Jacob Maris in his colouring. He has shown himself a painter of feeling who is able to represent the calm workaday life of the people of Laren or Brabant in a natural and unforced manner: a woman tending her child, or preparing dinner, or watering flowers ”

“ Nicolaas Bastert, born at Marseveen in 1854, is a pure landscape-painter, a pupil of the Antwerp and Amsterdam Academies and of Marinus Heyl. He formed himself more especially at the Hague, under the influence of the clarity of Mauve and the Marises, and has produced good work in a strong and restful manner: views on the Vecht, subjects taken from the Amsterdam water-ways, also old castles. He excels particularly in views of rivers and other waters. ”

“ First, in chronological order, among the minor artists of the Hague school is Charles Rochussen, born at Rotterdam in 1815, who was looked upon, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, as the only illustrative talent of importance among us. Teyler's Museum at Haarlem has a Hunting Party, painted in 1857, a scene filled with lords and ladies on horseback on a hilly heath in Gelderland, which, for observation, delicate drawing and happy colouring, is quite excellent of its kind. ”

“ Next to or together with Hein Burgers, David Adolphe Constant Artz was undoubtedly Israëls' principal pupil. He first came into contact with Israëls at the evening-classes under Royer at the Amsterdam Academy, where he painted by day from the living model, under Egenberger. From that time, he worked with his master, whom he followed to Zandvoort. Afterwards, when he had selected his tendency, he resolved to go to Paris, where he became very intimate with Jacob and Matthijs Maris (who painted the well-known portrait of Artz) and with Kaemmerer. ”

“ Thérèse Schwartze is a woman and her womanly intuition led her to woman's domain and to the use of a material in which womanly intuition rather than practical knowledge points the way. She began to produce pastel portraits in 1885 and soon achieved technical perfection, particularly in the modelling of the face, which is more natural and simple, at least in so far as regards the portraits of women, in this medium than in oils. ”

“ The studio gives him no ideas and so he goes off with his big canvases to those Laren interiors where, as he says, "nature herself places the colours in his hands and the movements and attitudes of the figures are there, in their natural environment." ”

“ He has also painted horses ploughing, water-colours that often display great power and are original by reason of the stiff lines of the agricultural slopes of Limburg, a very happy subject, to which he afterwards added glimpses of the life of the foundries, which give occcision for forcible illustration-work rather than for a well-considered harmonious whole, although we are bound to admire his powers as a draughtsman when he represents his puddlers at work. ”

“ The original members of the Hague Water-colour Society were Van de Sande Bakhuijzen, Miss van de Sande Bakhuijzen, Bisschop, Mrs. Bisschop-Swift, Bles, Blommers, Bosboom, Henkes, Israëls, Jacob and Willem Maris, Mauve, Mesdag, Sadée and Pieter Stortenbeker. These were immediately joined by Artz, Duchattel, Nakken, Albert Neuhuijs, C. S. Stortenbeker, E. Verveer and Weissenbruch, as ordinary members ”