The Hague

While in Amsterdam, I took a day trip to the Hague, probably best known as being the seat of the Dutch government (although not the capital-that’s Amsterdam), and the location of both the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court.

While there, I visited two art museums: the Prince William V Gallery and the Escher Museum. The Prince William V Gallery was originally a group of paintings from William V, Prince of Orange-Nassau’s collection of paintings he regularly opened to the public. Now, the gallery hosts a few 18^th century paintings from the Mauritshuis, The Hague’s larger art museum. I enjoyed seeing some more work by Dutch painters there, but the highlight (and the main reason I went to the gallery in the first place) was seeing Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Johannes_Vermeer_(1632-1675)_-_The_Girl_With_The_Pearl_Earring_(1665).jpg

Since the Mauritshaus, where the painting usually is, is under construction, it was at the Prince William Gallery for a few weeks. It’s one of my favorite paintings, so seeing it in person was really cool.

The Escher Museum, located in a former palace that was used as a winter palace by Queen Emma, holds an exhibition with a large number of works by Dutch graphic artist M.C.  Escher, as well as some information about the palace and Queen Emma. The two exhibits were an interesting combination of information. It was especially neat to see how Escher’s work progressed over time. I was much more familiar with his later work, focused on tessellations and optical illusions, so it was interesting to see the Italian landscapes that dominated his earlier work. Here’s the museum and a few of his more famous pieces:

They also had a kids’ focused part of the museum where you could pretend to be in an Escher painting. So here are two versions of Hand with Reflecting Sphere:

The rest of the day, I mostly wandered through town, seeing the major sites including the Binnenhof, where most of the Dutch government buildings are located:

the Noordeinde Palace, Queen Beatrix’s working palace:

the Peace Palace which among other things is the headquarters of the International Court of Law:

The peace flame in the second photo is actually surrounded by stones, each of which is native to and represents a country.

I also headed to Scheveningen, the part of The Hague that borders the North Sea. It was cold, windy, and sprinkling the day I was there, so there were understandably very few people at the beach.  

Although I didn’t know it at the time, this sculpture is part of the Beelden aan Zee sculpture museum and was created by Polish artist Igor Mitoraj (whose work will coincidentally appear again on this blog in a couple posts).

Overall, I had a really nice day trip. Although The Hague isn’t that much smaller than Amsterdam, it felt less urban somehow, although the lack of people certainly could be attributed to the weather and the fact that Easter was in a few days. Anyway, after spending almost all of my time this semester in some of Europe’s largest cities, it was nice to be in a place that was less crowded with people.