Children from The Hague School. Play, work, survive.

Underexposed theme 
Through the eyes of glorious Hague School painters such as Hendrik Willem Mesdag, Suze Robertson, Jozef Israëls and Jacob Maris, and contemporaries such as Thérèse Schwartze and Barbara van Houten, you get a unique insight into the world of children towards the end of the 19th century. 

The Hague School painters achieved great international fame as masters of the landscape and their paintings of the poor farming and fishing population. Now the spotlight is on the children in their works of art, an underexposed theme that deserves full attention.

Carefree or survival 
You see children who worked with their parents in the fields, bringing in the fish, or who worked, for example, as a maid or basket weaver. In short, children who participated in and outside the family, focused on survival. 

This is in stark contrast to the intimate portraits that the painters made of their own children. They often led a carefree existence. You see them reading, making music or drawing. 

Playing 
Yet all these children also had something in common: they all loved to play! The paintings and drawings of children sledding, toddlers with boats on the beach or playing with a simple hoop propelled with a stick are infectious. 

The exhibition consists of approximately 40 paintings and drawings from museum and private collections, including previously unseen drawings from Museum Panorama Mesdag's own collection.