"It is a peculiar tension that precedes a first visit to a painting exhibition", opined the Dutch art critic Jacques van Santen Kolff in the introduction to his four part review of the 1875 exhibition at the Teeken-Akademie Den Haag, "there is a unique charm, something stimulating in that nervousness, an eminently "picturesque" tension."1 Kolff wasn't disappointed, that which he had sensed in the air was confirmed by that which hung on the walls and led him to coin the term "Hague School",
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