I had no thought how substantially I would appreciate The Hague! It is a wonderful and tranquil town, crisscrossed with canals, incredibly walkable, complete of quite a few fantastic restaurants, and with public transportation that would make it simple to get in all places else in Holland. And on top of all that allure and livability, it has an unbelievable entire world-class museum ideal in the center of it, the Mauritshius, which has a selection of performs by artists like Vermeer, Rubens, Holbein, and Rembrandt! My partner Nowell and I were being really satisfied with our determination to make The Hague our home-base in Holland.
As we walked to the Mauristhuis museum we stopped for a photo at this breathtaking check out of the Dutch Parliament. The 13th-century Binnenhof is the oldest parliament building continue to in use. The overall body of water right before it is termed the Hofvijver which indicates “court docket pond”. It truly is beautiful to see such elegance in the middle of a town… and seem at that classic Dutch sky!
The Maurithuis museum was just a 15-moment flat and picturesque stroll from our hotel, so we arrived clean and ready for an fascinating dose of Art! This is a stunning assortment with numerous really popular gems, such as Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earring and Perspective of Delft, as very well as Fabritius’ Goldfinch.
I received some good depth pictures exhibiting the cracks and restoration of Lady with the Pearl, the shocking pointillism and little, exact designs of Look at of Delft, and the luscious brushwork of the Goldfinch.
Female with the Pearl and Goldfinch ended up actually exhibited a couple years back in San Francisco the place I dwell, so quite unusually this was my Second time seeing both these iconic functions. I did like seeing them in their household in the Mauristhuis, while. In the San Francisco show Goldfinch was hung in a slender hallway, and The Pearl was hung in a completely black space with an extreme highlight, which was intended to increase the drama of the expertise, but rather created the face blindingly light-weight. So I was equipped to enjoy each functions better in this appropriately-lit museum.
How often do you get to admire and review two Rubens marriage portraits and two Van Dyck marriage portraits all in just one area collectively?
Left Rubens’ Peter Van Hack, Claire Fourement and Van Dyck’s Peeter Stevens and Anna Wake (amongst them is an incredible “kunstkamer” or “artwork area” by Willem van Haecht.
I definitely fell in really like with this Van Dyck portrait. As significantly as I admire Rubens as a painter, when it arrives to portraiture, Van Dyck has the skill to capture a solid experience of becoming in the existence of a authentic man or woman.
The Mauristhuis also has a Rubens oil sketch of the exact same issue I saw in the Our Girl cathedral in Antwerp just a couple of times prior to this, Mary’s assumption to heaven:
Still left is the ~3-foot tall sketch in the Mauristhuis museum, on the ideal is the ~15-foot tall painting set up in the Antwerp cathedral.
You can see the stone arch to the ideal of Mary was omitted in the ultimate, and you can also see the blue shade is various: The last portray utilized far more high priced pigments, together with lapis lazuli for the blues, which at the time was even extra high-priced than gold. Right here are my element photographs of the sketch:
More facts from paintings by Rubens, Pieter van Anraadt, Pieter Claesz, Gabriël Metsu, Jan van Huysum, Franz Hals, Saloman van Ruisdale, Holbein:
And a awesome selection of Rembrandts, which include this small head of a Laughing Man and the famed Anatomy Lesson:
The Hague is a gorgeous town and also extremely livable For the reason that it is not mobbed with visitors, most the people today you see are just likely about their frequent life, finding up their young children from faculty or meeting friends for a consume just after perform. It is really a main metropolis, but there does not seem to be to be a whole lot of sounds or traffic, possibly simply because most folks travel by bicycle, so just strolling about felt quiet and stress-free.
There is certainly also a wonderful tiny museum devoted to MC Escher, which we really loved.
Delft was a extremely straightforward daytrip, simply because we could get there on the area tram line which had a quit right outdoors the doorway of our resort and took us to the heart of Delft in about 30 minutes. The Hague’s public transportation was very straightforward for a visitor, due to the fact you can just down load the “HTM” app to your cellular phone exactly where you can invest in solitary tickets or working day-long tickets, and the QRC ticket just seems.
Delft is a attractive position just to wander all-around, and we relished obtaining a slower-paced working day, so we didn’t do any formal excursions, but just admired the landscapes (and the foods!).
Again in the Hague:
We had great meals all within just a couple blocks of our lodge at Walter Benedict, Bistro Mer and Follia.
We loved the YAYs resort we stayed in (address: Koninginnegracht 20, 2514 AB Den Haag), which has apartment suites with kitchenettes, like a absolutely free laundry space for guests, for much less than a single hotel room in Amsterdam. It really is in a terrific tiny neighborhood with a lot of dining places and a easy small grocery keep, and only a 15 minute wander to the Mauristhuis museum. It was straightforward to choose the tram from just a couple of methods outside the doorway of the hotel to the Holland Spoor train station, which is how we visited Amsterdam and the amazing Rijksmuseum, which I’ll create about in my future blog publish.
This post is component of a series about our modern European tour as a result of Paris, Antwerp, The Hague, Amsterdam, and Vienna. If you have not nonetheless, signal up for my publication so you never ever miss out on 1 of my info-packed blog site posts. Also, I am at present working on a new painting online video to be introduced by the finish of this calendar year. “Glazing and Scumbling a Still Lifetime with Roses” will be a abide by-up to my primary “Glazing and Scumbling” on the net course, so I advocate acquiring that if you have not however, to get the most out of my future release!