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Albert Neuhuys has had a decisive influence on the artistic and pictorial development of the Laren School, in particular on the representation of Gooi farm interiors. Together with Jozef Israëls, he discovered the village of Laren, where he found the subject for his paintings in the dimly lit rooms of the farms. Because of his education at the Antwerp academy, he was strongly bound to romantic art, but around 1875 Neuhuys, under the influence of Jacob Maris, developed a moderate impressionistic style. He enjoyed international prestige and his name was known as far away as America.
Born in Utrecht, Neuhuys was educated there at the Utrecht City School of Drawing and Architecture, after which he followed four years of evening courses at the Antwerp Academy from 1868.
Back in the Netherlands, he first lives in Amsterdam for a while, where he mainly focuses on painting history pieces, portraits and interiors. In 1872 he moved to The Hague with his wife Neeltje Boeder, who was ten years his junior, where he soon felt at home in the artistic environment. Jozef Israels, Jacob Maris and Anton Mauve are among his friends. Neuhuys goes out and finds his inspiration in and around the fishing village of Scheveningen. A popular theme of that time are the young fishermen's couples that he paints lying in a dune pan or talking by the window.
In 1883 Neuhuys follows Jozef Israëls to picturesque Laren. It is the time of the emerging industry and the Hague Scholers are looking for unspoiled places in nature. Neuhuys's inner houses with wealthy citizens make way for interiors in which he depicts the local peasantry in Laren's traditional costume. He is so charmed by the village that he goes to live there in 1883, next to his painter friend Anton Mauve. In his studio in Laren, Neuhuys has recreated a Laren interior, where he can work quietly and where the genre with which he would become known, the Laren interiors, originates. He is particularly successful in England and America with his Laren interiors. They even become so popular that a trade is created in the Netherlands with copies of his work that are sold abroad as real work by Neuhuys. Although the inhabitants of Laren and Blaricum had a hard time, Neuhuys never depicted the harrowing side of their lives in his paintings. They are populated with peasant women and spinners, chubby and ruddy, and children who look happy and well fed. In the Netherlands, Neuhuys' work was initially regarded as 'superficial and relatively inferior, technique and material expression insufficient'. From 1904 the appreciation for his work changed permanently. In the same year he is knighted in honor of his sixtieth birthday and he also receives his first retrospective exhibition at the Rotterdamse Kunstkring.
In 1900 Neuhuys moves back to Amsterdam, then the cultural focal point of the country. He still regularly travels to Laren to make his famous interiors there. Neuhuys loved to travel and crossed many European countries. Between 1904 and 1910 he visited the United States several times, where he was received with great acclaim because of the popularity of his interiors. After moving to Locarno in 1914, he died there quite suddenly. Neuhuys is buried in The Hague and Arti et Amicitae honored him with a grand commemorative exhibition.
