In the 19th century, while Brabant-based artists regularly travelled outside the province to paint, painters from the rest of the Netherlands were drawn to Brabant's villages and unspoilt nature as a source of inspiration. Romantic painters were committed to depicting nature in all its splendour. In their wake, the realist painting movement took hold until, at the end of the century, a backlash came in the shape of symbolism. Viewing Reality is a collection of these extremes and displays artworks produced between 1800 and 1925. Read on to discover the artists on show.
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THE KNIP FAMILY OF PAINTERS
A famous Brabant family with art in their genes. The Knip family from Tilburg boasted no fewer than eight artists, over three generations. Although they worked closely together, each had their own specialism. Henriëtte Knip, for instance, was the queen of floral still lifes, while her niece Henriëtte Ronner-Knip devoted herself to painting sumptuous scenes of cats and kittens. Then there was Josephus Augustus, who painted landscapes from realistic studies, and lived and worked for many years in Paris and Italy.
SYMBOLISTS OF 'S-HERTOGENBOSCH
Not everything is visible to the naked eye; there's a whole invisible world beyond. Driven by this idea, at the end of the 19th century the symbolists unleash a backlash against realism. Seeking a deeper meaning, symbolist painters draw on all kinds of symbols to express their thoughts and feelings. Symbolists were fascinated by faith and the supernatural and had a strong nostalgia for the past.
Antoon Derkinderen (1859-1925), who was born in 's-Hertogenbosch, was one of the key figures in Dutch symbolism. 'Community art' was his ideal: art in public buildings that encouraged people to ponder over the deeper things in life. Antoon van Welie (1866-1956), who lived in 's-Hertogenbosch for years, also made a name for himself as a symbolist.
