Station: [7] Room 4 – Forest romanticism

Koekkoek painted over five hundred pictures during his lifetime. He became famous above all for his forest landscapes. Some of these can be seen in this room. The extensive Reichswald forest near Kleve provided him with a wealth of motifs.

During the Romantic period, the beauty of the local countryside, and especially the forest, was rediscovered. In the previous century, people had seen the forest primarily as a source of threat and danger. Now it became a symbol of perfect divine creation.

The largest painting in the room is also the largest painting Koekkoek ever made– one of his major works. It formerly belonged to the collection of King Willem II of the Netherlands. It had previously been shown in many exhibitions and received numerous awards. At 5.000 guilders, it fetched the highest price ever paid for a painting. 

A contemporary reports on his first encounter : 

"The interior of a forest, in which I recognised the great master: the sky in this painting is harmonious and true to life, the distance recedes as far as one can imagine, and the trees are so characteristic and executed with such expertise. One wants to enter this forest: yes! Friends, it is so captivatingly natural that one thinks one can hear the stream rushing and the wind playing in the leaves." 

Koekkoek proves himself to be a masterful artist in both large and small formats: a snuff box decorated with a miniature painting is on display in the showcase. The scene in front of a chapel in the forest is painted on copper and is the smallest picture ever painted by the master. The artist dedicated this treasure to his friend, the art agent Augustus Alexander Weimar from The Hague. 

The forest landscape with the towers of Moyland Castle was painted by the Haarlem painter Cornelis Lieste. The art collector and later museum director in The Hague, Jonkheer Johann Steengracht van Oostcapelle, inherited the castle in the middle of the century and displayed a valuable collection of paintings there, which included the painting of the beech tree in front of Moyland Castle, which we are already familiar with, and probably also this landscape by Cornelis Lieste.