Dutch Utopia

24 Sep 2010 - The Dutch Singer Museum in Laren has opened an exhibition called 'Dutch Utopia". The exhibition focuses on the romantic image of Holland as portrayed by American painters like William Merritt Chase, John Singer Sargent, George Hitchcock and Gari Melchers. In the years between 1880 and 1914 these painters traveled with dozens of other American painters to the Dutch villages of Katwijk, Volendam and Laren looking for the idyllic image of tulips, wooden shoes and windmills. In those years the USA industrialized in rapid pace and the painters were looking for a"life that once was". Inspired by the Dutch School and 17th century Dutch Masters they hoped to find a reality of hard-working farmers, high skies, christian values and colorful fields of tulips. Although they did not always find what they were looking for, they painted a romantic image of Holland that remained a myth for decades to come. The exhibition in the Singer Museum how the painters used their creativity to paint images of Holland that were rapidly disappearing or not longer existed at all.