149 Paintings You Really Should See in Europe — The Netherlands, Belgium, and Sweden

By Julian Porter

This chapter from Julian Porter’s essential companion to all the major European museums and galleries discusses some of the greatest paintings to be found in the museums and galleries of The Netherlands, Belgium, and Sweden. His passion for art began with the seven years he spent as a student tour guide in Europe. In this segment he visits Amsterdam, Stockholm, The Hague, Bruges, Antwerp and Ghent and discusses works by the Dutch masters such as Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Van Eyck, but also Van Gogh and Renoir.

In the usually pretentious arena of art connoisseurs, Porter’s voice stands out as fresh and original. He finds the best of the best, which he describes with entertaining irreverence, and spares you hours of sore feet and superfluous information.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Oct 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781459723894

Julian Porter

Julian Porter is a litigation lawyer whose other passion in life is art. He’s had a lot of fun looking at art and wants to share his enthusiasm with others. He has lectured in galleries from Madrid to St. Petersburg. He lives in Toronto.

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9

SCANDINAVIA AND THE LOW COUNTRIES

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As we’ve explored the galleries of Europe, the works of Dutch and Flemish painters have provided many of the highlights of collections from London to St. Petersburg. But there is no substitute for meeting these masters on their home territory. What better way to conclude our exploration than by visiting the galleries of Holland and Belgium? We will also take a side trip to Stockholm, a city of the sea, much like Halifax with changeable, threatening weather. Around the edge of the harbour, there is a whiz of cyclists everywhere, and in the centre, Sweden’s Nationalmuseum.

In Holland, as you drive from place to place, the light is extraordinary, a different sparkle, and the sky is everywhere. The land is at sea level or even below in some places.

The approach to the Mauritshuis in The Hague, one of the world’s great small galleries, is through an idyllic park with neat rows of trees surrounded by regal houses, one hotel, and one museum, similar to London’s wealthy Belgravia. Before the park is a chic shopping street. Here is a manageable town. Go along the Dennewelt, a street of antiques and an 1898 art nouveau building, and on to the square of Lange Voorhout just before the Mauritshuis. Here, as in London, in a tree-adorned park around a divine square of seventeenth-century Regency architecture, all is as William and Mary would have had it.

The Mauritshuis itself is a small square building with scrolls of garlands over a pond circled with lampposts, lights, and flowers. The setting could not be more romantic. The small tower adjacent to the gallery is the prime minister’s office, next to it the small turreted parliament building. When you enter the gallery, you have a view of the pond.

In Amsterdam I recommend going to see the four great canals — the Singel, Herengracht, Keizersgracht, and Prinsengracht. There is a dazzling feast of little bridges and small boats, with the best continuous lateral architecture in the world, perhaps rivalled only by Venice and Prague.

First all the narrow frontages — so narrow, some tilting, all part of a harmonious continuum. These separate jewels blend together in your head. Various colours — black, maroon, cream, ochre brown — each building quite separate with its clear vertical shafts yet joined in a lateral harmony along the canal. There is not a site in the world that has side by side by side so many similar yet distinct façades running on and on. You search each one, marvel over it, yet when your eye eases to the next façade, off you go again. Every building insignia and ornamental curve is a feast. The pity and wonder of it is that you can’t retain it in your memory bank, yet you know this pattern of narrow, disciplined, laced architecture is special beyond imitation.

Crossing the border into Belgium, the art in Bruges is worth a visit, but Bruges itself is glorious: tranquil canals, horses clopping, corridors of scalloped architecture, cobblestone streets, the smell of flowers. The buildings are intricate with their red brick, the launches on the canals sleek and trim. The ambiance of Bruges is special, a town of chocolates