Clouds and Light

Discover how painters such as Van Gogh, Mondrian, and Jacoba van Heemskerck drew on the legacy of Dutch landscapes and realism to put their own spin on the Impressionist movement.


Impressionism may have originated in France, but artists in late 19th- and early 20th-century Netherlands quickly made it their own. The genre's vibrant colors and focus on light and atmosphere were a perfect complement to the country's groundbreaking traditions of landscape painting and realism. This exhibition catalog brings together hundreds of works by nearly forty artists including Johan Barthold Jongkind, Vincent van Gogh, Jacoba van Heemskerck, and Piet Mondrian. It traces the birth of the Hague School, whose practitioners captured the changing moods of light in the coastline's vast, grey skies. And it explores the Amsterdam Impressionists, whose cityscapes offered realistic images of modern life. Alongside vibrant reproductions of masterworks, a series of lively essays explore a diverse array of topics, including Dutch landscape painting within an international context; Dutch artist settlements and communities; and iconography in Dutch impressionism.