M.C. Escher, Original Hipster

The Escher museum is also in The Hague, and we all spent quite a while looking though the museum devoted to his art.

M.C. Escher

As you can see from his self portrait, Maurits Cornelis Escher, embodied the look all of today's hipsters dream of attaining. He was not a scholar, having to repeat a grade - twice - and still not receiving a diploma upon leaving school. The only subject he excelled at was art. With his arty leanings, his father sent him off to college to learn architecture, but after only a few days his teachers encouraged his father to let the 19-year old M.C. switch to decorative arts. Even still, M.C. didn't excel, but he did graduate. His favorite form of artwork being the woodcuts, a form of art he would use in many of his more famous pieces. 

Green or yellow lizzard?

Red or white pegasus?

The two photos above are pencil and ink pieces tackling the theme of deception.  

Three Spheres II

Still Life with Reflecting Globe

He also liked to play with interpretations of different worlds, as seen in the reflection in the sphere (two above) and his own reflection in the empty ink bottle (just above). I especially liked the pieces where he only used black, white, and shades of grey, very impressive!

Depth, wood engraving

He liked to create art that represented the relationship between space and a flat surface, as he did in his work 'Depth', 

Day and Night

and on the topic of metamorphosis, as in his work 'Day and Night'. 

St. Peter's, Rome

For the wood engraving above, he chose a peculiar angle in which to showcase St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. If you look closely you can see the visitors and their shadows on the ground far below. 

Belvedere

Escher also created a lot of implausible places in his artwork, like the work above, 'Belvedere,' and really the only piece I knew of his before going to the museum, 'Relativity.' It seemed like the poster for this piece was in every other dorm room at San Diego State! 

Relativity

I knew a lot of the other art I saw in the Escher museum, I just hadn't realized they were all works by Escher until our recent trip. Such as the trippy artwork 'Drawing Hands' and 'Bonds of Union.' So cool, and heavy, man… heavy.  

Drawing Hands

Bond of Union

The other thing I wanted to mention was the building the Escher museum was housed in was a former palace! Used as a winter residence by Queen Mother Emma (King Willem-Alexander's great, great grandmother) from 1901 - 1934. It was then used by four generations of Queens, the afore mentioned Emma, Wilhelmina, Juliana, and Beatrix, as their working palace until 1984. Some of Queen Emma's furniture can be viewed throughout the museum.  

The museum, however, has been funk-i-fied for the masses. My favorite bit in each room was the enormous, strange chandeliers. I took pictures of all the chandeliers, but have only included the best. Enjoy! 

Skull and crossbones chandelier

Pipe chandelier

Bass chandelier 

Bird chandalier 

Bomb chandelier

Star chandelier

And if you ever find yourself in The Hague, go to the Escher Museum, it is very worthwhile! 

Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague

Den Haag, or, The Hague, is the 3rd largest city in the Netherlands and is the seat of the Dutch parliament, supreme court, and council of state. It is also the city in which most of the foreign embassies are located, as well as the location for the international court of justice, international criminal court, and along with other major cities (New York, Geneva, Vienna, etc.) hosts the United Nations.  Plus it's got some cool museums! 

Den Haag Crow

We took a train into The Hague on Sunday morning and spent the day exploring the city and its museums. We walked through the area that houses the international court house and department of justice. 

International Department of Justice

Watched workers prepare for Monday's holiday, called King's Day. It seemed like a celebration similar to the 4th of July, in which everyone wore garish orange costumes and accessories (in stead of our red, white, and blue) and partied hardy with beer, street food, and live music. Sadly, we flew out Monday morning, so we only got to experience the set-up and anticipation. 

Den Haag: old and new

We made our way to the Mauritshuis museum that houses many famed Dutch paintings. The one most known to all visitor's is Johannes Vermeer's Girl with the Pearl Earring, painted circa 1665.  My guidebook explains that Vermeer was a relatively unknown and forgotten painter, but in 1881 this painting came up for auction in The Hague. Two art advisors noticed it and decided it could be special. They agreed to work together and bid low, and bought the painting at auction for only 2 guilders and 30 cents. They took it back to a workshop, cleaned it up, and realized it was a great work of art. The rest is history.

Vermeer's The Girl with the Pearl Earring

I like the Girl with the Pearl Earring (love the book!), but one of the other Vermeer's in the museum really stole my heart: The View of Delft, painted in 1660. This painting is so accurate, that you can identify all of the buildings in the Kolk harbor in Delft. I just love the way to sunlight filters through the clouds, casts shadows on the harbor, and the two women going about their daily business on the shore. Stunning painting, in my humble opinion.  

Vermeer's View of Delft

The next painting was also a favorite, and I blame the anatomy and physiology teacher I used to be. It is Rembrandt's painting of an anatomy lesson, painted in 1632. In reading my guidebook, I learned that the arm muscles were painted from looking at an anatomy book, but that the body used as the demo was that of a convicted criminal, Aris Kindt, who had been hanged for robbery. The criminal had lost his right arm from an earlier theft conviction, and x-rays of this painting show that Rembrandt had originally left the right arm a stump, but later painted a hand over it. 

Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp 

And the last painting that really struck a chord with me was Rubens' Old Woman and a Boy with Candles, painted in 1616-1617. I just loved the way the candlelight illuminates the boy and old lady's faces. It was very lifelike, yet etherial at the same time. 

Peter Paul Rubens' Old Woman and a Boy with Candles

After visiting Maurithuis museum, we made our way to lunch and another museum, which I'll post more about on Monday. As we were walking on the quiet roads of The Hague, we passed by their parliament buildings. Very pretty! 

But seriously, it was very quiet. Like, eerie quiet. It took us a LONG time to find anything open, even restaurants, even though it was past noon on a Sunday of a 3-day weekend. Strange! 

Netherland's parliament buildings

... And More Flowers (Keukenhoff, Part Two)

More flowers!

The photos in this post were all taken with my Cannon DSLR camera. Off and on throughout the day I played with focal depth. It worked especially well in the morning, when all the flowers were dappled with dew. 

Tulips with dewdrops

Another tulip

White, spiky tulip

Sweet snowdrops

Bell-shaped spiky flower

White spiky flowers

I also took lots of photos of the flower beds. Again, many are similar to the last post's photos, but I couldn't stop myself from taking so many photos. And trust me, I'm only posting about 10% of the photos I took! 

Rows of flowers that go on forever

More tulips

An amazing array of color

Flowers and a statue

Flowers at a wonky angle

Flowers, flowers everywhere!

Hey! How'd that yellow guy get in here?  

I took a few photos from atop the working windmill. There was a terrific field of red tulips just beyond the garden's perimeter. You could purchase tickets for a tour through the fields by way of canal boat, but the line for tickets was formidable. 

An up close shot of a working windmill

Fields of tulips

I took a photo of the flower-made Van Gogh self portrait without my big mug in the way. You can see the people in the background in the top of the picture, to give you a good idea of the size of the portrait. 

Vincent Van Gogh

Thankfully, it never properly rained the day we visited Keukenhoff. It did, however, threaten to rain on several occasions. When it threatened to rain, we (and the thousands of other visitors) would duck into the exhibit halls. I was happy to see that Bill was with me in Holland after all! :-) 

See, Bill was with me all along! 

Inside the many exhibit halls, I took quite a number of exotic flowers and floral displays. 

Big ol' flower

Snapdragon? Venus Flytrap?

A bunch of spiky flowers

Where's Waldo (AKA Jen)?

In the late afternoon, we realized the parade we had planned this whole weekend around would be so crowded that we would be able to see nary a float. We stayed inside the garden instead, hoping the crowds would diminish as the parade began. Sadly, that didn't seem to happen, but at least the weather held steady. 

We found a quirky 'selfie garden' with mirrors to use for selfie taking...

A right proper selfie!

And giant clogs for comedic photos. Are you laughing? No? Oh, well! 

Those are some big shoes to fill!

As we were heading out of the park for the day I started taking photos at wonky angles, just for the heck of it. Only two photos turned out interesting enough to post; the rest were just weird! 

Cherry blossoms in bloom 

Brian photographing tulips

A few last landscape photos were taken as we meandered our way out, back to the bus, and towards a fun pub for beer-y sustenance. 

Follow the yellow (red, blue, white) brick road

A penultimate view of Keukenhoff

Goodbye Keukenhoff!