our baseline
Location – Durgerdam
location – our baseline
Joseph Beuys argued that the light in Holland lost its unique brightness as a result of land reclamation in the Zuyder Zee in the 1950s. The makers of Dutch Light established a baseline on the dike linking the villages of Marken and Monnickendam, from which to observe...
museum – Teylers Museum
Teylers Museum was named after Pieter Teyler van der Hulst (1702-1778), a prosperous cloth and silk merchant in Haarlem, and a sponsor of the arts and sciences at the time of the Enlightenment. Inspired by the belief that knowledge was the key to human advancement,...
location – the Zuyder Zee
Aerial footage over the Zuyder Zee and vicinity Joseph Beuys described the Zuyder Zee as a vast mirror of light, the eye of Holland. Seeing is believing.
location – United States
Dutch Light contrasts the arid atmosphere of the Painted Desert in Arizona with the humidity of Holland. We were given a unique opportunity to film in and around Roden Crater, the light observatory that the American artist James Turrell has been constructing since the...
location – France
Following in Vincent van Gogh’s footsteps, we went to the South of France, to Provence, Arles, St Rémy and the Mediterranean to see whether the light there was any different from that in Holland. Vincent van Gogh wrote the following lines in a letter to his brother...
location – Scheveningen
The dunes and the sea at Scheveningen, with the grey light that the Hague School painters loved so much, the light that brought them fame.
location – Rijksmuseum
The treasure chest of the Netherlands, with the country’s largest collection of 17th-century paintings. Dutch Light shows some of the highlights of the collection and visits the museum’s repositories. www.rijksmuseum.nl
location – Nieuwkoop
Jan Andriesse regards The Village of Noorden near Nieuwkoop as one of Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch’s most beautiful paintings. It marks a turning point, he says: ‘You still see Vermeer on the left, but Mondriaan’s diamonds are starting to sparkle on the right.’...
museum – Mauritshuis
Arguably the best museum in the Netherlands for paintings of Dutch light, with one of the finest collections of 17th-century art. The Mauritshuis was built in 1640 for Johan Maurits, Count of Nassau-Siegen, after a design by the two most famous Dutch architects of the...