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Den Haag - Unexpected art treasures in an overlooked city

by Christopher Somerville

The name of Den Haag brings to mind the International Court of Justice, perhaps the Dutch Parliament in session, and the - um, not much else. Yet this overlooked city has plenty of laid-back charm


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Many visitors to Holland think only of the finger-lickin’ pleasures of Amsterdam. The name of Den Haag brings to mind the International Court of Justice, perhaps the Dutch Parliament in session, and the … um, not much else. Yet this overlooked city has plenty of laid-back charm. Its art collections, in particular, make a fascinating day's viewing.

The Royal Picture Cabinet collection fills only two floors of the Mauritshuis, a smallish 17th-century town house - but what a collection! Highlights are Vermeer’s open-faced Girl with the Pearl and his light-and-shade View of Delft painted in 1658; Frans Hals’s Laughing Boy with bunny teeth and tousled hair; a superb portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger of a thoughtful Robert Cheseman, falconer to King Henry VIII; and a huge Young Bull by Paulus Potter with marvellous details of animal hair, leaves and flowers. Rembrandt’s famous early study, the Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp (1632), radiated a luminous glow, and there is a wonderful self-portrait of the artist in a baggy black hat.

Up a dark spiral stair at 65 Zeestraat you'll find an oddity of the 19th century art world that is reckoned the finest survivor of its kind - Hendrik Mesdag’s immense 1881 panorama of the nearby seaside village of Scheveningen. This monster of a cylindrical painting, almost 400 feet long and 46 feet high, shows square-built bomschuit boats, riders and strollers on the beach, the red-roofed village with its first few holiday buildings already standing, an enormous green-blue North Sea out west, and inland the spires of Den Haag separated from Scheveningen by a wide expanse of green and silver dunes.

In the Gemeentemuseum, a very striking pale brick 1930s building with heavy chrome and brass doors that is an art object in itself, hangs Piet Mondriaan’s red, blue, yellow and white lozenge-shaped painting Victory Boogie Woogie. The museum recently paid £25 million for this; amateur daubers may feel they could have just as well if only they'd had a free weekend ...

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