The Hague School

The Hague School is a collective term for a group of painters active in The Hague between around 1860 and 1890. They reacted against the established painters of the art academy who idealized reality. In contrast, the Hague School painters, including Jozef Israels, the brothers Maris and Anton Mauve, aspired to render what they saw realistically. They admired the French Barbizon School artists, who just like them, worked as much as possible en plein air (out in nature). They were intent on capturing the light and atmosphere of a landscape.

Initially, the colours used by the Hague School artists were fairly gloomy, consisting of mostly greyish tints. This changed under the influence of French Impressionism; their palette became lighter and brighter and the facture looser. A younger generation of painters in Amsterdam continued this less formal painting tradition; they were called the Amsterdam Impressionists.