I had no notion how a lot I would love The Hague! It is a stunning and peaceful town, crisscrossed with canals, very walkable, complete of quite a few fantastic eating places, and with community transportation that would make it straightforward to get all over the place else in Holland. And on best of all that appeal and livability, it has an amazing globe-class museum suitable in the middle of it, the Mauritshius, which has a collection of functions by artists like Vermeer, Rubens, Holbein, and Rembrandt! My husband Nowell and I had been extremely joyful with our final decision to make The Hague our property-base in Holland.

As we walked to the Mauristhuis museum we stopped for a image at this beautiful view of the Dutch Parliament. The 13th-century Binnenhof is the oldest parliament making even now in use. The overall body of h2o before it is named the Hofvijver which signifies “court docket pond”. It’s spectacular to see this sort of natural beauty in the center of a city… and glance at that traditional Dutch sky!

The Maurithuis museum was just a 15-minute flat and picturesque stroll from our hotel, so we arrived clean and all set for an fascinating dose of Artwork! This is a amazing assortment with various very well known gems, which includes Vermeer’s Lady with the Pearl Earring and View of Delft, as nicely as Fabritius’ Goldfinch.

I received some terrific depth photographs demonstrating the cracks and restoration of Girl with the Pearl, the stunning pointillism and very small, specific shapes of Perspective of Delft, and the luscious brushwork of the Goldfinch.

Female with the Pearl and Goldfinch ended up truly exhibited a handful of decades ago in San Francisco where by I are living, so really unusually this was my 2nd time viewing each these iconic works. I did choose looking at them in their home in the Mauristhuis, while. In the San Francisco show Goldfinch was hung in a narrow hallway, and The Pearl was hung in a completely black home with an rigorous spotlight, which was supposed to raise the drama of the expertise, but in its place produced the confront blindingly mild. So I was able to enjoy equally functions superior in this properly-lit museum.

How generally do you get to admire and review two Rubens marriage portraits and two Van Dyck relationship portraits all in one room collectively?

Still left Rubens’ Peter Van Hack, Claire Fourement and Van Dyck’s Peeter Stevens and Anna Wake (in between them is an remarkable “kunstkamer” or “art home” by Willem van Haecht.

I genuinely fell in love with this Van Dyck portrait. As much as I admire Rubens as a painter, when it comes to portraiture, Van Dyck has the potential to seize a powerful emotion of getting in the presence of a true man or woman.

The Mauristhuis also has a Rubens oil sketch of the very same issue I saw in the Our Woman cathedral in Antwerp just a couple times in advance of this, Mary’s assumption to heaven:

Remaining is the ~3-foot tall sketch in the Mauristhuis museum, on the appropriate is the ~15-foot tall portray installed in the Antwerp cathedral.

You can see the stone arch to the ideal of Mary was omitted in the closing, and you can also see the blue color is distinct: The last painting utilized more high-priced pigments, including lapis lazuli for the blues, which at the time was even extra high priced than gold. In this article are my detail shots of the sketch:

Additional information from paintings by Rubens, Pieter van Anraadt, Pieter Claesz, Gabriël Metsu, Jan van Huysum, Franz Hals, Saloman van Ruisdale, Holbein:

And a nice assortment of Rembrandts, including this small head of a Laughing Man and the famous Anatomy Lesson:

The Hague is a attractive metropolis and also incredibly livable Since it is not mobbed with tourists, most the people today you see are just going about their typical daily life, selecting up their little ones from university or assembly pals for a drink following get the job done. It’s a key city, but there does not seem to be a lot of noise or traffic, in all probability simply because most folks journey by bicycle, so just walking all around felt tranquil and comforting.

There’s also a pretty very little museum devoted to MC Escher, which we truly liked.

Delft was a very simple daytrip, due to the fact we could get there on the neighborhood tram line which experienced a quit proper exterior the door of our lodge and took us to the heart of Delft in about 30 minutes. The Hague’s public transportation was very effortless for a visitor, since you can just obtain the “HTM” app to your mobile phone where you can purchase solitary tickets or working day-extended tickets, and the QRC ticket just seems.

Delft is a lovely put just to wander all-around, and we relished owning a slower-paced day, so we failed to do any formal excursions, but just admired the landscapes (and the meals!).

Back in the Hague:

We had fantastic foods all in a couple blocks of our resort at Walter Benedict, Bistro Mer and Follia.

We cherished the YAYs lodge we stayed in (tackle: Koninginnegracht 20, 2514 AB Den Haag), which has condominium suites with kitchenettes, such as a totally free laundry place for attendees, for considerably less than a solitary lodge room in Amsterdam. It is in a fantastic very little neighborhood with plenty of eating places and a handy small grocery store, and only a 15 moment walk to the Mauristhuis museum. It was straightforward to just take the tram from just a several methods exterior the door of the hotel to the Holland Spoor coach station, which is how we frequented Amsterdam and the extraordinary Rijksmuseum, which I’ll generate about in my future weblog put up.

This submit is aspect of a series about our modern European tour by Paris, Antwerp, The Hague, Amsterdam, and Vienna. If you have not however, sign up for my e-newsletter so you in no way pass up a single of my information and facts-packed blog site posts. Also, I am presently functioning on a new painting online video to be produced by the finish of this 12 months. “Glazing and Scumbling a Still Daily life with Roses” will be a observe-up to my unique “Glazing and Scumbling” online training course, so I propose having that if you have not but, to get the most out of my up coming launch!