Joris van der Haagenartist • painterArnhem ca. 1615-1669 Den Haag

Joris van der Haagen descends from the family of painters Van der Haagen. Of the four generations of painters, Joris became the most famous and his work ended up in museums and private collections. In 1575 his grandfather Jan van der Haagen moved from Antwerp to Dordrecht. After his marriage, his son Abraham settles as a painter in Arnhem, where Joris is born and grows up. After the death of his father in 1640, Joris moves to The Hague, where a lavish court life had developed at that time and he saw more opportunities for his painting career. Until about 1656, Van der Haagen worked as a topographer for the city. Initially he painted a lot in the Haagsche Bosch, where Huis ten Bosch was completed in 1952. He also goes into the dunes to paint the city from there - the sea did not interest him. His interest lay in the buildings in the city, the Korte and Lange Vijverberg, where fashionably dressed figures paraded that he depicted with great precision in his work. In The Hague he became a member of the Sint Lucasgilde in 1643 - apparently he had already completed an apprenticeship as a painter. Feeling no longer at home in the old guild, he founded the Confrérie Pictura in 1656 with a colleague. From that time on Van der Haagen regularly travels and works abroad, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, and just across the German border near Nijmegen. But above all his love was for the landscape in his own country and Van der Haagen was best known for his landscape portraits and panoramas; 'the Dutch meadows with their waters and high skies, the Dutch inland dunes with their rich woodland, the slopes of the Veluwezoom, those wide vistas in the Betuwe or the Achterhoek.' Due to the extensive specialization in subjects in the 17th century, Van der Haagen regularly collaborated with other artists such as Nicolaes Berchem and Phillip Wouwerman, who decorated his work with figures or animals. He also worked with Paulus Potter, who, like Van der Haagen, lived on the Veerkade in The Hague with a view of the open meadow. Joris van der Haagen would go down in history as a 'true artist, who managed to express the beauty of the Dutch landscape in his thorough and conscientious work'.