If you now walk through Laren and the picturesque Blaricum, you will see that some houses have extra large windows on both the ground floor and the top floor. There is a good chance that a painting studio used to be located there where the works of art were completed. Moreover, both villages are ideally located in the center of the Netherlands, the landscape is picturesque with its forests and heathland landscapes and the panoramic views. In many works the horizon of the painting is also low, making the sky an important part of the scene.
The Dutch light and clouds are famous all over the world. The gray and blue tones and the many clouds and the position of the sun make the appearance and color schemes unique. According to some, it is precisely here that the sky is the darkest and the white is the whitest. Mauve wrote to his wife: "... It is touchingly beautiful here, a fineness of lines and lovely poetry radiates from everything, interior houses, roads, fields, beautiful heathland and woods and the people are of the sweetest kind imaginable is....".
The Dutch painter Jozef Israëls "discovered" Laren as a painter's village around 1870 and enthusiastically told his friends from the Hague School about this. Also or especially in the vicinity of Laren, the realism, especially outside, could be beautifully captured. Real nature is at its best here so that it does not have to be (over)romanticized. Neuhuys mainly focused on interiors and portraits. After 1898, a large group of mostly young painters came to Het Gooi and had a more impressionistic style. Well-known names of the second generation included Evert Pieters, Sal Meyer, Jacob Dooijewaard, Frans Langeveld and Georg Rueter. Most of them were genre painters, influenced by Neuhuys. More "landscape artists" included Cornelis Vreedenburgh, Gerrit Willem van Blaaderen, Frans Langeveld and Ed van de Ven. Foreigners also managed to find Laren, such as Max Liebermann and William Henry Singer who built the country house "De Wilde Zwanen", which would later become the "Singer Museum".
Albert Neuhuys, poetsen tinnen schaal
Dutch Barbizon
From an art historical perspective, there is not really a separate movement. The Hague School had already emerged ten years earlier and several founders of the Larense School (Jozef Israëls, Albert Neuhuys, Anton Mauve) were known as Hague painters. Foreign researchers talk about the "Dutch Barbizon". Following the example of the French Barbizon, painting was done here in the open air, so paint in tubes and folding easels were used. Nature realism was no longer maritime (because The Hague) but more focused on the countryside around Laren.
De Tien / The Ten
David Schulman, who we have in our collection, is one of the artists who belong to the Larense School. He started his career by delivering art supplies to the many painters who resided or lived there. This is how he came into contact with perspective at an early age, the best pigments, gessos and canvases to create high-quality works. In 1905, under the impulse of Auguste Legras, the Gooise painters' association "De Tien" was founded with the aim of organizing group exhibitions throughout the country. Derk Meeles, Toon de Jong Emanuel van Beever, Co Breman and David Schulman belonged to De Tien. This club closed. later became part of the Laren-Blaricum Association for Visual Arts. Non-painters could also become members, which was a breaking point for Schulman, among others, so that he founded the Gooische Painting Association with others and was its first chairman. Blaricum and Laren are still beloved places for artists to set up their easels. Not only because of the environment but now also because of its rich artistic past. It is not without reason that Mondriaan, van Gestel and others settled there when the peak of the Laren School (1870-was already over). .
