10 Dutch artists and their most famous paintings

For a tiny country, the Netherlands has produced an astounding array of some the world’s best artists. Over hundreds of years, Dutch artists have made their outsized mark on the world, creating new styles and changing the art world. Let's take a look.

Dutch painters you should know

You probably already know their work, but here’s a guide to the famous Dutch painters you should know.

Dutch master painters

For half a millennium, these classic Dutch painters shaped, inspired and sometimes shocked the global art world with their talent. Here are some of the best:

Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450-1516)

Born as Jheronimus van Aken, Hieronymus Bosch ended up taking his famous surname from the town of Den Bosch, where he was born in around 1450. Very little is known of the man himself and no one knows where he learnt his skills, but he put them to extraordinary use.

His art is often described as nightmarish, and with good reason. While his depictions of hell are meant to make you quake and quiver, with their horrifying monsters and painful-looking tortures, even his paradises are often also full of bewildering creations, such as multi-headed birds, men hugging giant strawberries, and people riding flying fish.

Unfortunately, he left behind no interpretations of his work. This means that over the years, he has been seen as everything from an incredibly pious artist to a purveyor of witchcraft!

The city of Den Bosch is extremely proud of its eponymous artist, and there are statues of his weird little creations throughout the streets, as well as a museum with reproductions of almost every known piece of work he completed.

Key pieces:

• The Garden of Earthly Delights
• The Temptation of St Anthony

Bruegel the Elder (c.1525-1569)

Born in around 1525, Bruegel the Elder became one of the most significant Dutch Renaissance painters. He pioneered a trend that changed the art world, of no longer producing paintings of biblical landscapes and Bible stories, but paintings of everyday vistas and people at work instead.

Many of Bruegel's paintings depict celebrations of regular people as well, and are called things like The Peasant Wedding, The Peasant Dance and The Fight Between Carnival and Lent. One of his most fun paintings, and one of the most indebted to Bosch, is Netherlandish Proverbs. This chaotically busy “village” scene is jam-packed with depictions of Dutch and Flemish proverbs from the time. Over 100 proverbs have been identified in the painting so far!

Having said that, his most famous work is The Tower of Babel, which can be found in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, and it depicts the famous tower from the Bible story.

Key pieces:

• The Peasant Wedding
• The Tower of Babel

Frans Hals (c.1582-1666)

Frans Hals was born Antwerp, in what was then the Spanish Netherlands, but his parents fled the Fall of Antwerp when he was just a couple of years old, and he lived in the Haarlem for the rest of his life.

By this time, art in the new Dutch Republic had undertaken a complete about-face, and religious art was frowned upon as possible sign of Catholicism. As a result, Frans Hals specialised in portraiture. Art was still valued and encouraged, and the richer members of society wanted themselves and their families commemorated by great artists. Among the great and the good of the Netherlands, he also managed to fit in a painting of famous philosopher Rene Descartes.

British readers will almost certainly recognise one of Hals’ paintings, but they will probably not know who it was by nor what it truly depicts. Laughing Cavalier is one of the most famous paintings in the UK, but only gained this name thanks to an enthusiastic curator when it was exhibited in the UK in 1872, 250 years after it was painted. The sitter is an unknown Dutchman, possibly a member of a militia, but certainly not an English Cavalier, as many Brits assume.

Key pieces:

• The Gypsy Girl
• Laughing Cavalier

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669)

Rembrandt is undoubtedly one of the most famous artists in the world. He was working in a period that came to be known as the Dutch Golden Age, when Dutch trade, arts and sciences were all flourishing. He painted a wide range of topics, from portraits to landscapes to biblical scenes, and he also completed over 2.000 sketches.

Fantastic as it sounds now given his global reputation, Rembrandt was plagued by money troubles throughout his life, which partly explains the sheer quantity of paintings that he produced. He was constantly needed to work to pay his debts, and his many, many portraits of the inhabitants of Amsterdam have become a valuable resource in understanding how people lived at the time.

His house and studio on Jodenbreestraat in Amsterdam is now a museum, and gives an excellent insight into life in Amsterdam in the 17th century as well as into the man himself. The Rijksmuseum also has a lot of his work on display, including the immense The Night Watch, which hangs in its own gallery.

Key pieces:

• The Night Watch
• The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp

Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750)

A native of The Hague, Rachel Ruysch was an extremely talented still-life painter, with a specialism in flowers. Her father was a professor of anatomy and botany, and she grew up surrounded by specimens which helped her learn her craft.

At the age of 15 she was apprenticed to a flower painter in Amsterdam and by the age of 18 she was selling her work independently. She was not the only female painter working at the time, but she is unusual in that she continued to paint after her marriage. The fact she married another painter probably had something to do with that!

During her life she enjoyed great fame and renown, and her paintings sold for more than Rembrandt’s did during his lifetime. In 1701 she became the first female member of the painter’s guild of The Hague. She was still breaking glass ceilings 300 years later: in 2021, she became one of the first female artists to be admitted into the “Gallery of Honour” in the Rijksmuseum, alongside Gesina ter Borch and Judith Leyster.

Key pieces:

• Still Life with Flowers on a Marble Tabletop
• Flowers on a tree trunk

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675)

The small city of Delft is where Vermeer called home all his life. He is an enigmatic man, and seems to have had little in his life outside of his art. He became extremely well-known and his paintings were sought after in Delft and the surrounding villages, but he was never truly famous in his lifetime and he died in debt.

Part of the reason for his lack of money is he always painted with very expensive pigments, using them more lavishly and extensively than anyone else in this era. The results are that his paintings, usually of small, domestic scenes, often set in his own rooms, are luminously bright and sumptuous, even today.

Little is known of his life, and there is no evidence that he had any formal training. Even today, the art world still buzzes with theories about how an untrained painter, who seems to have done no preparatory sketches, could achieve such photo-realistic work.

His two most famous paintings, Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Milkmaid, are both to be found in the Netherlands, the first in the Mauritshuis in The Hague and the second in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Key pieces:

• Girl with a Pearl Earring
• The Milkmaid

Dutch modern artists

As the world changed towards the end of the 19th century, so did Dutch art. Dutch artists continued to push boundaries and redefine the very concept of art. Here are some of the best modern Dutch artists:

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

Arguably one of the most famous painters in the world, Dutch or otherwise, Van Gogh is a great example of the changing art world in the late 1800s. His early work was generally portraits of peasants and labourers, sitting somewhere between realistic and caricature. However, it was not until he moved to Paris in 1886, just four years before his untimely death at the age of 37, that he saw the possibilities of the new modernism movement in art and developed his trademark style.

His work is post-impressionist, and his short, stuttering brush strokes also owe something to the George Seurat and the pointillist movement, but Van Gogh is undoubtedly his own thing. Famously, and cruelly, he remained unappreciated in his lifetime, without selling a single painting - despite his brother being a renowned art dealer! Now, however, his works are routinely among the most expensive ever sold.

The Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam provides an excellent overview of his life and works, and seeing his style gradually emerge over time is a wondrous feeling. Make sure to book your tickets in advance, though, as it sells out fast!

Key Pieces:

• Sunflowers
• The Starry Night

Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) and Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931)

Hot on the heels of van Gogh for title of most famous modern artist is Piet Mondrian. However, without his friend Theo van Doesburg, people might never have heard of him. They were both pioneers of early 20th century abstract art, transforming the very idea of what art could be.

The art world was changing so rapidly at this point in time that it is hard to comprehend. In 1870, Monet’s first impressionist works shocked and appalled the art world and just 50 years later, Mondrian was producing his grid-based paintings of pure colour and form.

Mondrian was already gaining some notoriety in the art world when Theo van Doesburg first contacted him, but these early paintings bear little resemblance of the radical work that would come later. Together, in 1917, they founded a magazine and an art group known as De Stijl, which would go on to influence artists around the world for decades.

De Stijl pushed for pure abstraction and the artists set themselves a strictly limited “art vocabulary” they could use, such as only using rectangular forms, straight horizontal and vertical lines and only primary colours and values. Mondrian’s black gridlines on a white canvas, with panels of red, blue and yellow are synonymous with modern art the world over.

De Stijl had an impact beyond the art world too, influencing both architecture, particularly the Bauhaus movement, and design, with De Stijl furniture still being extremely sought after. The Rietveld Schröder House is a great example of De Stijl architecture, which you can visit in Utrecht. You might also notice that many municipal buildings, schools and train stations still use De Stijl colours in their designs. 

Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum has an excellent permanent De Stijl exhibition, and Amersfoort, Mondrian’s home town, has a small museum dedicated to the man and his art.

Key pieces:

• Van Doesburg: Neo-Plasticism: Composition VII (the three graces)
• Mondrian: Composition in Red, Blue, and Yellow

Willem de Kooning (1904-1997)

Although he lived in American most of his life and eventually renounced his Dutch citizenship, De Kooning was born in Rotterdam and didn’t move to America until he was 22 years old.

A prolific and influential abstract painter, it took a long time for De Kooning to gain the notoriety he deserved. He was known for a long time as a “painter’s painter” – someone that others in the art scene looked up to as a leader and pioneer, but who somehow remained little known to the general public.

De Kooning was strongly influenced by other modern artists of the day, including Picasso, Mondrian and Miro. His art was part of the action painting movement, made most famous by Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings. His work is frenetic in style, full of energy and life, and meant to represent the artist's emotions and psyche at the moment of painting.

Key pieces:

• The Woman Series
• Interchange

Video credit: Youtube / Smarthistory

Karel Appel (1921-2006)

In 1948, a group of young, international artists who wanted to move away from both naturalistic art and “sterile” abstract art formed an avant-garde art group called Cobra, after the capital cities of each of the members (Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam).

Amsterdammer Karel Appel was one of those artists, and took part in the first Cobra art exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1949. The exhibition generated outrage in the Dutch art world, and the group were derided as "scribblers" or even con artists.

The Cobra movement focussed heavily on the process of creating art, rather than the outcome. They believed that making art should be joyous, like it is for children, and their works were often bold, brightly colourful and fun. The Cobra group disbanded after only three years, but it had already made a huge impact on the world by that point.

Karel Appel continued to work in the Cobra style, and his paintings feature folkloric and mythic elements, and often look childish at first glance.

The Cobra museum in Amstelveen features several of his artworks, and a huge sculpture of his sits in the courtyard just outside.

Key pieces:

• People and animals
• Hip, Hip, Hoorah!

Video credit: Youtube / Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

Which is your favourite Dutch painter?

Dutch painters have had such an impact on the art world, it's easy to imagine the entire history of art could have been very different without their impact! With so many amazing famous Dutch artists, can you choose a favourite? Let us know in the comments below!