Contact gallery for price		Willem Roelofs Amsterdam 1822-1897 Berchem, Belgium Landscape with Windmills and Two Fishermen Oil on panel 28.7 x 47. 6 cm signed lower right: W Roelofs The painter Willem Roelofs, born in The Hague, is considered to be a forerunner of the Hague School, a group of landscape painters who concentrated on the atmosphere and play of light in nature. Hendrick Van de Sande Bakhuvzen taught Roelofs the elements of painting and he later went on to study at the Hague Academy. His early work belonged to the dominant style in painting that time, Romaticism, displaying the grandeur and power of nature. He mainly painted Dutch landscapes with ponds and cows. In 1847, the same year in which he founded the Hague artists association, Pulchri Studio, he moved to Brussels. During the years he lived in Brussels (1847-1887), Roelofs formed a link between the French Barbizon School and the progressive Dutch landscape painters in The Hague. Influenced by the French artists, Roelofs often painted in nature and left out many details, preferring to convey the overall effect of the landscape, sky and clouds. As the most important painter of the Hague School, Roelofs is considered one of the founding fathers of Dutch Impressionism. Having begun under the influence of the Romantic tradition in which nature was represented in detail, he radically changed his artistic vision when he encountered the painters of the Barbizon school in France, who often painted in the open air and left out a great many details. According to these artists, this treatment was often truer to Nature. Though he lived much of his life in Brussels, Roelofs often returned in the summers to The Hague, bringing with him the ideas of Impressionism. In Belgium he was one of the co-founders of the Société Belge des Aquarellistes and was held in high esteem by the Belgian royal family. In 1887 he returned to The Netherlands for a permanent stay so that his sons Willem Elisa and Otto Willem Albert, who were also to become painters, could further their education. It was Willem Roelofs who encouraged the Vincent Van Gogh to become a painter and to attend the Royal Academy of Art. Landscape with Windmills and Two Fishermen shows Roelof’s command of the landscape, sky and clouds. With our painting the artist shows great skill in evoking a sky that is at turns threatening and promising. The two windmills on the left are darkened under stormy skies while the two mills receeding into the background on the right are captured in the light of the clouds’ sunbreaks. The painting is balanced with the addition of two fisherman, one squatting and another standing, awaiting perhaps the right conditions to go fishing. Roelofs has given the viewer almost the entire spectrum of greens and grays as he captures the earth and sky. The grass, water plants and fields of the earth below are painted with fine and often whispy strokes, while the sky is painted in thick, wider and bolder movements of the brush. While he evokes this sublime scene, one that might be a favorite of the Romantic movement, Roelofs has eschewed detail in favor of strokes that convey the right mood of this moment between sun and a strormy sky. This artistic preference, shown dramatically here, is what established Roelofs as the father of Dutch Impressionism.