Saturday 22 March | 17.00 – 21.00

Reflection, a sense of wonder and enchantment

At night, when it is dark outside, the doors of museums in The Hague open especially for young cultural night owls. On Saturday 22 March between 5pm and 9pm, there will be a special programme full of cool activities. With one ticket, you can visit the most beautiful cultural locations in The Hague and Voorburg. Of course Escher in The Palace will participate again!

Art is a serious business, right? Sure, but art is also a way to discover the world. To be amazed, to investigate and to have fun. Want to know how? Come to Escher in The Palace and dive into the world of M.C. Escher!

Be enchanted by the magic in Escher’s prints and go on a journey of discovery through his exciting palace of mirrors. We challenge you to discover him in a new way. Maybe today you will get to look at art upside down or with your eyes closed. During this museum night, nothing is what it seems!

Get tour tickets here!

Our programme

Storyteller

Times
17.30-17.55
18.30-18.55
19.30-19.55
20.30-20.55

Storyteller Winston Scholsberg introduces you to the adventures of the mischievous and clever spider Anansi. Will you join him in his stories?
Winston whirls across the stage and teaches you all about rhythm, patterns and reflections. Topics that are also common in art, especially with Escher.

Bennies Playcare

Times
Continuous

Be amazed by looking at art in a playful way. With interactive tasks, Bennies Playcare creates a creative chaos where children and parents can discover new things in Escher’s prints over and over again.

Workshop Playing with mirrors

Times
To be announced

Create your own artwork by playing with patterns that seem to go on forever. Artist Inge Aanstoot teaches you how to make your own infinite pattern, with the help of a mirror, pencil and paper. Be inspired by Escher and other creatives you will meet during museum night. Shift, shuffle, reflect and create your own world on paper!

Warm sounds

Times
17.30-17.55
18.30-18.55
19.30-19.55
20.30-20.55

Discover the warm sounds of the hand-pan during a live performance amidst the works of Escher. Enjoy sparkling music that truly seems to come from another time. Relax and immerse yourself!

The Latin expression ‘memento mori’, which means ‘remember you must die’, is a perennial theme in art. Julie de Graag literally made memento mori the subject of a print of the same name which she produced in 1916. Her reason for making such a print at that particular moment is clear. De Graag’s health problems regularly prompted bouts of depression, but it was the horrors of the First World War (1914-1918) that caused her mental state to deteriorate further. She was unable to cope with the suffering and stress. In her final years, De Graag simplified her prints and chose to depict more tranquil subjects. She relied increasingly on the support of her mother, who at that point was living at 26 Snelliusstraat in The Hague.* De Graag’s doubts about her abilities grew. These thoughts eventually became overwhelming, and she took her own life on 2 February 1924, at the age of 46.** Julie de Graag was buried in the family crypt at the Nieuw Eykenduynen cemetery in The Hague, a final resting place she shares with her stepgrandmother, father, mother and an aunt after whom she was named. The grave still exists to this day.

At the point when De Graag decided to end her life, M.C. Escher had the opportunity to show his work in the Netherlands for the first time, at De Zonnebloem, a commercial art gallery in The Hague, where De Graag’s work had also been shown and sold. The same issue of monthly illustrated magazine Elsevier’s Geïllustreerd Maandschrift in which her good friend Bertha van Hasselt placed an announcement of the death of Julie de Graag contained a notice of Escher’s forthcoming exhibition. ‘His work is that of a young, fresh spirit who is not to be intimidated and will calmly go his own way. […] Though this work by Escher is not yet profound, one must realise that this is the work of youth and we must conclude that it shows every promise of great beauty in the future.’*** As one life came to a tragic end, another was just beginning.

After Julie de Graag’s death in 1924, there were reactions from the various artistic circles in which she was active, and the local newspapers also wrote about the loss of a talented and still relatively young artist. ‘A true artist with a small yet insistent voice has passed away’, wrote the national daily NRC newspaper on 28 March 1924. That voice remained quite small after her death. Her work still sold, however, including at Kunsthandel G.J. Nieuwenhuizen Segaar in Leiden in 1930. The art monthly Maandblad voor Beeldende Kunsten carried an extensive account of her life and work in an article in 1927. The image of De Graag as a modest person persisted, as evidenced by an article in Het Vrije Volk (15 June 1948): ‘A modest, unassuming woman. Yet her work bears witness to a pure sense of beauty. A beauty that we can all understand.’

In the decades that followed, De Graag’s name featured mainly in publications about female artists, including Bloemen uit de kelder: Negen kunstenaressen rond de eeuwwisseling (1989). Several museums in the Netherlands, including Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Rijksmuseum, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and Kröller-Müller Museum collected her prints and drawings. De Graag’s name lives on in her art, though very few exhibitions of her work have ever taken place. With very few other sources of information about her life, it is her work that bears testimony to her life. 2024 is the centenary of the death of Julie de Graag, prompting Escher in The Palace to present her rich oeuvre alongside that of Escher in an exhibition.

Sources
* J.P. Hinrichs, Bremmerianen. Julie de Graag en haar kring: tien kunstenaressen in Den Haag en Laren, Leiden 2024, p. 80
** The Hague Municipal Archives, 0335-01.1531 Overlijdensakten Den Haag, inventory number 1531, doc.no. 457
*** B. van Hasselt, ‘Julie de Graag, overleden in februari 1924’, Elsevier’s Geillustreerd Maandschrift 34 (1924), pp. 294-296; J.D. Plantenga, ‘Glaswerk van de Bazel en houtsneden en teekeningen van M.C. Escher in de Zonnebloem, Den Haag’, Elsevier’s Geillustreerd Maandschrift 34 (1924), p. 439

All prints shown are part of the collection of Kunstmuseum Den Haag. The print entitled Memento Mori is a long-term loan from the Wibbina Foundation.

2024 has come to an end and it has been another special and unforgettable year. These final days of the year, we look back on all the great exhibitions and programmes that we have organised. The year started with the exhibition Just Like Escher, in which we showed how contemporary artists and designers challenge Escher’s ideas. During the summer, our newest addition to the collection, the White cat, was on display and there was a competition where everyone could submit their self-made cat artwork. Visitors could also enjoy two summer exhibitions: Becoming Escher and Maura Biava. Currently, the exhibitions on Julie de Graag and on a special donation containing two unknown drawings by M.C. Escher are still on view. In addition, we have shared as many stories as possible about the person, life and art of Escher through our social media channels, our website and the in-depth pieces we write. All the wonderful images we shared this year can be found in this special animation. We thank everyone for their support over the past year and hope to continue to inspire you with our stories and images in 2025!

2024 marks the centenary of the death of Julie de Graag. This talented contemporary of M.C. Escher managed in her woodcuts to capture the essence of plants, animals and people with just a few details. The two artists shared a great love of nature, closely observing the world around them, and depicting it in their prints, each in their own unique way. In the winter of 2024-2025, Escher in The Palace is presenting De Graag’s rich body of work in an exhibition side by side with that of M.C. Escher.

Julie de Graag used her life drawing talent to capture what she saw before her in crisp woodcuts. Her stylised work gave ordinary subjects like animals, landscapes, flowers and plants a certain grandeur. Julie de Graag’s style was already well developed when Escher embarked on his career. In 1919 he was a mere beginner, starting his studies at the School of Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem. He was trained in the same visual tradition in which De Graag worked, Art Nouveau, which was all about the stylisation of the subject. But although this is reflected in several of his early works, Escher soon went his own way.

While Escher became a world-famous master printmaker, De Graag is now appreciated mainly by aficionados. There are only scant sources on De Graag, though it is possible to gain an impression of her family and her life on the basis of archival documents. She was born in Gorinchem, Zuid-Holland province, on 18 July 1877 and was christened Anna Julia de Graag, though she was known as Julie. Her mother, Karolina Stephana de Graag-Couwenberg, was from a family of artists, which explains Julie de Graag’s talent for drawing. Karolina married Johannes de Graag on 16 October 1872.* They had six children: two sons and four daughters. Julie was their fourth child. The family moved to The Hague when she was a child, in connection with her father’s work as a registrar. There, from the age of twelve, she attended lessons at the Academy of Art (now KABK).** Having learned several techniques such as modelling and life drawing, she decided to specialise in printmaking.

Delicate health and resilience

Neither Escher nor De Graag enjoyed a carefree childhood. From a young age, they both faced health problems and were frequently absent from school. Escher was often ill as a child, and spent extended periods in convalescent homes from the age of seven. De Graag had a sheltered childhood, and even as an adult continued to need a lot of support, mainly from her mother. For both of them, physical frailty made them somewhat isolated. Undeterred by this, however, they both unhesitatingly committed themselves to the life of an artist.

After trying out several things, Escher chose to train as an artist at the School of Architecture and Decorative Arts. The man who taught him printmaking techniques, Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita, recognised his talent and encouraged the young Escher. It was during this period that the foundations of his later artistic career were laid. During his training he had an opportunity to study and sketch animals at Artis zoo in Amsterdam. Escher loved observing animals for long periods of time. He was particularly interested in birds, reptiles and fish, which he captured with a keen eye for detail. These animals later appeared in his work, including Paradise (1921). Like Escher, Julie de Graag was frequently absent from school as a child, but this did not prevent her from learning, and studying subjects that interested her. She taught herself zoology and botany, for example, which led her to produce prints of flora and fauna that were full of character. Take Two Owls (1921), for instance, in which the bird in front looks watchful and defensive as it protects the anxious-looking owl behind. Although she had a particular talent for black-and-white images, she also often elected to use vibrant colours, and tended to work in relatively small formats. Her animal prints are often unpretentious, yet full of character. This can for example be seen in the satisfied face of her Sitting Cat (1917), which measures only 5.4 by 3.9 cm.

Artistic circles

In 1901 Julie de Graag met art teacher and expert Henk Bremmer when she took one of his courses. She admired him, and sought his approval. She also wrote to him asking if he would like to have a portrait she had made of him.*** Bremmer was a fan of De Graag’s work, and he brought her to the attention of collectors, as a result of which her work ended up in the collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum and other institutions. Bremmer was an important figure for many Dutch artists in the early 20th century. The ‘Bremmerians’, as this group was known, were all inspired by him. Julie de Graag is also regarded as a member of this circle.

Some of the other women in the group became lifelong friends of De Graag’s, including Anna Egter van Wissekerke, who allowed her friend to use her studio in villa De Lingenskamp in Laren, Noord-Holland. Like famous contemporaries including Piet Mondrian and Bart van der Leck, De Graag was attracted to the natural setting of this artists’ community, and she moved there in 1904.**** The fact that De Graag was a hub of the artistic community there is apparent from a letter that Egter van Wissekerke wrote to Bremmer: ‘The Mendeses are asking whether you are ever going to come again. I also heard v.d. Leck saying to Miss De Graag that they never hear from you. You see that the best part of half of Laren is asking after you.’***** The Mendeses referred to here are Anna and Joseph Mendes da Costa, sister and brother-in-law of Escher’s teacher Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita. It is thus likely that De Graag and Escher had heard of each other. They moved in the same artistic circles, though it is not clear whether they ever actually met or knew one another. What is certain, however, is that they were both fascinated by the medium of printmaking.

Meticulous observation

From the moment De Graag moved to Laren, she largely made woodcuts, managing to capture the natural beauty of the world in the wood. Hardly any of her early work has survived, however, having been destroyed in a devastating fire on New Year’s Day 1908. Her studio was lost completely. The fire also destroyed all of her woodcut materials, so she was forced to switch to painting for a while. But her love of printmaking persisted, and De Graag returned to it, encouraged by those around her. In her work, she focused on the things she was appreciated for: images of animals and the natural world, as in the distinctive Dog’s Head (1920), in which she beautifully depicts a dog’s devoted look. This may have been her own dog, which barely survived the fire.

The work of these two artists reflects their appreciation of the beauty of nature. The subject continued to attract Escher even after he left for Italy in the 1920s following graduation. He cherished both the mountains of Italy and trips to the seaside. Unlike Escher, De Graag did not travel much, drawing inspiration mainly from her immediate surroundings in the village where she lived. She would also create small biological collections in her studio. Interestingly, their love of small things meant the two artists were attracted to similar creatures. Good examples of this are their images of a nautilus and a cockle. These are not shells – as the titles they were later given suggest – but animals that have shells as part of their anatomy. To these small creatures, the shell is like a permanent home which they cannot exchange for another. When it came to shells, Julie de Graag had an expert in the family: her sister Maria, who had travelled along the Pacific coast of South America collecting shells. This nautilus shell comes from tropical waters, so it could well have been a gift from her sister.******

A focus on ordinary subjects is quite evident in the early work of M.C. Escher and the work of Julie de Graag. They saw the natural beauty of the world around them, and produced powerful prints on the basis of this shared fascination. The exhibition explores themes like nature, portraits and animals, and also the techniques they chose. Featuring prints and drawings from the collection of Kunstmuseum Den Haag, the exhibition thus sheds new light on these geniuses of printmaking.

Sources
* The Hague Municipal Archives, 0335-01 Ambtenaar van de burgerlijke stand van de gemeente ’s-Gravenhage, inv.no. 654, doc. no. 667. Archival research by Babs van Eijk
** The Hague Municipal Archives, 0058-01 Academie van Beeldende Kunsten, 1889, inv.no. 458. Archival research by Babs van Eijk
*** The Hague Municipal Archives, 0836-01 Familie Bremmer, inv.no. 1-0007. Letter from Julie de Graag to H.P. Bremmer, 30 May 1916
**** A. de Ranitz, ‘Bij het werk van Julie de Graag’, Maandblad voor Beeldende Kunsten 4 (1927), p. 227; J.P. Hinrichs, Bremmerianen. Julie de Graag en haar kring: tien kunstenaressen in Den Haag en Laren, Leiden 2024, p. 77
***** The Hague Municipal Archives, 0836-01 Familie Bremmer, inv.no. 1-0006. Letter from Anna Egter van Wissekerke to H.P. Bremmer, 2 August 1916
****** K.J. Mienis, ‘De Gezusters M.J. en A.J. de Graag: een schelpen verzamelaarster en een kunstenares’, Correspondentieblad NMV 323 (2001) 1, pp. 107-108

All prints shown are part of the collection of Kunstmuseum Den Haag. The print entitled Sitting Cat is a long-term loan from the Wibbina Foundation.

My predecessors at Escher in The Palace have often written about Escher’s Belvedere (1958), a favourite with our visitors. The print has a magical power that touches millions of Escher fans around the world. What appears at first to be simply a fantastical building turns out to be an impossible structure. How can it be that the ladder starts at the inside and ends at the outside of the building? And why are the pillars at the front and back connected? The figures wandering around the structure add to its mysterious character. Interestingly, Escher drew inspiration for these characters from Jheronimus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights (1490-1500), part of which he had copied more than twenty years earlier. With the Italian mountain landscape in the background, this lithograph is a surprising mix of completely different elements.

It is not only the foreground of the print that has been a mystery. For many years, the landscape in the background was too. Research has shown that Escher did not invent the background of Belvedere, however. The landscape really does exist, in Italy. Escher lived in this country for more than a decade, and such vistas are common in his early prints. Aspects of Italy also recur in his later work. Think, for example, of the prominent role played by the village of Atrani in his three-part Metamorphoses series (1937, 1939-1940, 1967-1968) and the terraced Italian landscape that forms the backdrop to Waterfall (1961). Like Atrani, it is possible to pinpoint the precise location of the background in Belvedere: the village of Pettorano sul Gizio in the Abruzzo region, which Escher visited a number of times, including on an extensive tour in May and June 1929. The trip prompted a desire to produce an illustrated book about the region, so while there he made countless drawings of villages like Scanno and Pettorano sul Gizio. Later that year, he would develop many of them into prints. The book never came to be, but with 6 prints and 28 drawings, the trip certainly bore fruit. *

Escher visited Pettorano sul Gizio during this trip to Abruzzo with his close friend Giuseppe Haas-Triverio (1889–1963), with whom he made several tours of Italy and Corsica. Their visit to Pettorano sul Gizio was only brief. The two friends travelled there from Pescocostanzo, via Rivisondoli and Rocca Pia, on Wednesday 5 June 1929, and on 6 June they left for the larger town of Sulmano. Haas-Triverio’s journal shows that their stay in Pettorano sul Gizio was nothing to write home about. They arrived in the village at seven in the evening, to find that all the hotels were fully booked. They eventually managed to rent a private room, which was so dirty that Haas-Triverio describes it in detail in his journal. At night, an army of insects kept him awake and, hoping for a more peaceful night’s rest, Escher used large amounts of insecticide. After a very disturbed night, the friends set out in order to go sketching.

“We left our rucksacks at a small, clean restaurant and went in search of subjects. In the end, we did not feel like working, but felt we must. An oil sketch. We ate at the trattoria, and then made another small sketch.” **

While Haas-Triverio produced an oil sketch that has since been lost, Escher made a drawing of Pettorano sul Gizio and the valley beyond. The drawing focuses on the square houses of the Italian village in the foreground, but he also leaves plenty of room for the depth of the Gizio valley and the high mountain ridges. This preliminary study helped Escher produce a more detailed scratch drawing in October of the same year. The scratch drawing is in Kunstmuseum Den Haag’s collection, and the study is in a private collection in the US.

Escher was producing woodcuts with greater and greater ease in 1929, so the scratch drawings were a way of seeking more technical challenges. His scratch drawings were made after visits to various inhospitable regions of Italy. Besides Pettorano sul Gizio, he also drew Opi, Cerro al Volturno and Alfedena in Abruzzo, and Santa Severina in Calabria. The scratch drawings were made on thick, impenetrable parchment and can be recognised thanks to the gentle transitions from dark black to a golden beige colour, which makes them almost appear to glow in the dark.

This technique, devised by Escher himself, was described by his father George Arnold Escher in his journal:

‘We looked at the sketches Mauk made on his trip to Abruzzo, and developed one of them at Steckborn using a new procedure he has devised, namely applying a layer of printer’s ink over thick paper (parchment-like) that is impenetrable to oil and, by scratching away more or less of it using a small pocket knife, revealing tints of various shades. It is suitable mainly for darker drawings, like the interiors of churches and other buildings, taking less effort to depict light than dark.’***

During his visit to his parents, Escher’s close childhood friend Bas Kist came by. Having seen the scratch drawings, Kist advised Escher to make lithographs, and he followed the advice. This important decision to embrace lithography was therefore directly influenced by the scratch drawings. Escher had not made lithographs since his student days, so he turned to his former teacher H.B. Dieperink for some technical tips. Lithography then became a permanent element in his arsenal of printmaking techniques. The scratch drawings did not, however. This may be because of Escher’s love of printmaking, and his preference for the reproducibility of a lithograph or woodcut, rather than the uniqueness of a drawing. Nevertheless, they do warrant our attention, as the scratch drawings reflect his love of the Italian landscape and the abiding influence it would have on his work. ****

Despite the fact that Escher stopped making scratch drawings at a certain point, they proved popular at an exhibition held at Kunsthandel Martinus Liernur, a gallery in The Hague, in 1931. The exhibition presented a cross-section of Escher’s work since graduation, featuring Biblical scenes and the Emblemata series, as well as scratch drawings and prints of Italy. Art critic Jos de Gruyter wrote a lengthy review in Het Vaderland newspaper, which also discussed Pettorano sul Gizio in some detail:

‘The lithographs and related scratch drawings, as he calls them, emphatically testify to a greater sensitivity. I would rank his lithographs no. 39, Stilo, colla Fiumara, no. 44 Cloister near Rocca, Imperiale and no. 47, La Cattolica di Stilo in Calabria, among the most flawless and perfect that Escher has produced to date. The curious Pettorano sul Gizio (no. 50, above the fireplace) is however more fascinating and remarkable. The atmosphere of the landscape, which resembles a moonscape, is haunting. One is forced to wonder what kind of creatures might live in those regular, square, cubic structures in the foreground. Surely not people, for there is no trace of life, domesticity or warm blood. They must be stiff and unapproachable, the creatures that withdrew to these almost mathematically constructed square edifices to live an abstract and ascetic life. The drawing deserves much praise; the background, in particular, with the valley, mountains and sky, is beautifully, purely and tightly rendered.’ *****

The scratch drawings must therefore have been more than merely an experiment to Escher, otherwise he would not have shown them at Martinus Liernur’s gallery. They had a lasting impact on his work, not only because they led him to embrace lithography, but because elements of them inspired later prints. The simurgh (the mythical Persian creature with the power of speech) from the late scratch drawing Still Life (1943), for example, also appears in the prints Other World (1947) and Gallery (1946), and the valley and mountains near Pettorano sul Gizio provide the backdrop to Belvedere (1958). This is typical of Escher, who would occasionally decide to revisit subjects from decades before. In the case of Belvedere this occurred no less than 29 years later. Italy had an impact on Escher that would never fade.

Source
* M.C. Escher, His Life and Complete Graphic Work, edited by J.L. Locher, Abradale Press, 1982, p. 34
** Gemeinsam unterwegs. Giuseppe Haas-Triverio und M.C. Escher, Beat Stutzer, Scheidegger & Spiess, 2024, pp. 144-146 (translated into Dutch by Marijnke de Jong and Beat Stutzer)
*** M.C. Escher, His Life and Complete Graphic Work, edited by J.L. Locher, Abradale Press, 1982, p. 34; Levensschets G.A. Escher, National Archive of The Netherlands, inv. no. 2.21.371, 97 (6 July 1929)
**** Maurits C. Escher, een eigenzinnig talent, J.W. Vermeulen, Kok Lira, 1995, pp. 44-45
***** Houtsneden, litho’s en teekeningen door M.C. Escher. Bij Martinus Liernur, W. Jos de Gruyter, Het Vaderland. 8 October 1931

The management of Escher in The Palace is delighted at The Hague city council’s decision to grant a credit facility for the costs of redesigning the former US embassy on Lange Voorhout in The Hague to house the museum. This represents a first step towards its evolution to a fully-fledged museum accessible to all. The European tendering procedure for the design of the new museum will be launched shortly.

“The award of the credit facility is an important step on the way to a new and inspiring home for the Escher collection, working in close and effective collaboration with The Hague city council.”
– Jet de Ranitz, chair of the Supervisory Board of Escher in The Palace / Kunstmuseum Den Haag

“We manage the world’s largest museum collection of Escher’s work. This move will give us the opportunity to evolve into a fully-fledged museum accessible to all. I look forward to giving more space to contemporary makers who engage in a dialogue with Escher, and to welcoming more schools and other visitors than we can at our current premises.”
– Margriet Schavemaker, director of Escher in The Palace / Kunstmuseum Den Haag

Escher collection

The Hague city council owns more than 1000 objects by Dutch artist Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972), making this the world’s largest museum collection of work by this internationally celebrated printmaker. The collection is managed by Kunstmuseum Den Haag. Since 2002, this collection has been presented and accompanied by educational programs at Escher in The Palace on The Hague’s Lange Voorhout. Visitor numbers have grown steadily from 74,000 a year to 187,000 in the Escher anniversary year 2023.

Unique gift relating to Escher’s tile tableau on an Amsterdam villa

M.C. Escher is world-famous for his optical illusions, but it is less well-known that he also made public artworks. In the winter of 1959-60, he designed a tile tableau with fish and birds, inspired by his famous print Sky and Water I (1938), for a villa at Dirk Schäferstraat 59 in the south of Amsterdam. It was commissioned by Wolbert J. Vroom, a great admirer of Escher’s work, who was looking for a black-and-white image to decorate the facade of his newly built home.

The Vroom family has recently donated two previously unseen Escher drawings for this project to the museum plus the extensive correspondence relating to the commission and family photos of the unveiling of the tableau, which Escher attended. These objects give us a glimpse behind the scenes of the creation of a unique work in Escher’s oeuvre.

An Escher or nothing

Wolbert J. Vroom and his wife Antonia H.M. Dreesmann contacted Escher in 1959. They had been living in their new villa on Dirk Schäferstraat for almost a year and wanted to enliven its facade with a work of art. They briefly considered a mosaic but thought Escher’s black-and-white work better suited to the building’s modern architecture. When Dreesmann showed her husband a reproduction of Escher’s 1956 work Swans (White Swans, Black Swans), there was no doubt about the way forward. Vroom later wrote to Escher: ‘We (my wife and I) are both enthusiastic about your work and it is to be an Escher or nothing.’

Escher proposed to base the tableau on his print Sky and Water I, in which fish gradually metamorphose into birds. The diamond-shaped design would introduce a diagonal dynamic to the modern villa’s orthogonal lines and Escher’s tessellations would lend themselves well to an arrangement of tiles. Escher soon enlisted the ceramics factory De Porceleyne Fles (now Royal Delft) to make the tiles. He had collaborated with them on tiled columns for the Maris College in The Hague and would do so again a decade later for a project at a secondary school in Baarn.

After a process of several months, the tableau was delivered in the spring of 1960 and unveiled in the presence of the clients, the villa’s architect Lau Peters and Escher. The commissioned larger tableau can still be seen on the villa on Dirk Schäferstraat.

Unknown drawings

The core of the gift comprises two unknown drawings that shed a special light on the design process. One of the design drawings shows the search for the right composition for the facade. Escher came up with two variants, one with a horizontal emphasis, the other vertical. He made a drawing of the facade and covered the horizontal design with a flap of paper with the vertical version, enabling an easy comparison of the two options. This should have made it simple for the Vrooms to reach their decision but the extensive correspondence between Escher, Vroom, De Porceleyne Fles and the architect Lau Peters, included in the gift, reveals tensions surrounding this important choice. There was a lengthy discussion between the various parties about which design it should be. The architect favoured the vertical variant, which would accentuate the building’s height, but Vroom and Escher stood firm. In the end, it was the horizontal diamond-shaped design that was chosen.

Escher elaborated the design in a more detailed drawing, on which he numbered the seventy-five tiles with his famous precision. The arrow indicates where Escher’s monogram MCE should be placed. The fabricator, De Porceleyne Fles, could now set to work. Although the process was not without some ruffles, all parties were ultimately enthusiastic about the result, as is evident from a letter from De Porceleyne Fles to Vroom: ‘We all agree that this tableau will truly be a jewel on your home.’

A commision to take home

For Escher this project had a personal sequel in the form of a lasting memento on his studio wall: a smaller tableau with the same tiles. But it was not initially self-evident that he would want this reminder of the project: although he enjoyed working on this exceptional assignment, at first Escher was dismissive. In 1959 he wrote to his son George and his wife Corrie: ‘There is a letter in the mailbox from the resident of a “villa” in Amsterdam South who wants to decorate his facade with tiles designed by me! It’s in the goddamned air, this tile nonsense.’ After a difficult experience with the tiled columns for the Johanna Westermanschool (now the Maris College) in The Hague, Escher was hesitant to start work on another design for tiles. But there is little of this reticence in his later correspondence with Vroom. Escher enjoys creating the instructional drawing of the different types of tiles and puts all his effort into achieving the best possible execution of his design. His enthusiasm for the end result is evident from the fact that he gladly received a smaller tableau from the Porceleyne Fles with the same tiles and hung it in his own studio for many years.

Escher was not the only one who was pleased with this small tableau. A sample of the tile tableau also hung in the showroom of De Porceleyne Fles, to show their customers the beautiful things they could make. When Abraham J. de Lorm, the director of the Gemeentemuseum Arnhem (now Museum Arnhem), visited De Porceleyne Fles in 1964, he saw the tableau in the showroom. He was very impressed and, with the permission of Escher and Vroom, had a smaller version made for the museum’s collection, which is identical to the tableau that Escher had in his studio. The sample tableau from the showroom of De Porceleyne Fles was purchased by the Dutch state around 1990 and is now in the collection of the Dutch Tile Museum in Otterlo.

Since the Just like Escher exhibition held between November 2023 and March 2024, the striking modular carpet from Studio Wae has been on display on the second floor at Escher in The Palace. This floor covering lends a contemporary touch to Escher’s legacy, above all doing so in a sustainable, circular way through the use of waste materials.

Set up by Tynke van den Heuvel (1975) in 2017, Studio Wae is a pioneering design studio striving to raise awareness when it comes to the recycling of raw materials. Studio Wae uses manufacturing waste to create modern design often inspired by Escher’s work. Escher in The Palace opted for colourful versions of the Polygon Rug and City Flooring, in which Escherian patterns feature prominently.

The modular function of the tiles dovetails neatly with Escher’s work. Studio Wae’s floors comprise individual parts, allowing them to be pieced together like a jigsaw. The way in which the shapes fit together is akin to the myriad versions of tessellations that Escher produced. Escher regarded a tessellation as a motif, the outer lines of which join seamlessly on all sides, enabling the pattern to continue ad infinitum. The many visits that Escher made to the Alhambra in the Spanish city of Granada were his major source of inspiration. This Spanish-Islamic fort and palace complex is bursting with all kinds of mosaic featuring abstract motifs, which he eagerly drew and made his own. These drawing sessions constitute an important foundation for the tessellations that he subsequently incorporated more and more into his work as cycles and metamorphoses.

Hence Studio Wae’s designs look like they have been extracted from Escher’s prints. Both the recognisable cube pattern from Polygon Rug and the pattern in the gallery on the second floor feature as tessellations in the print Cycle (1938). This print marks an early highlight in Escher’s oeuvre – a perfect amalgamation of the abstraction of a tessellation, the change intrinsic to a metamorphosis and the infinitude of the amazing world created by Escher.

 

During the exhibition on Julie de Graag, an installation by the Croatian artist Tina Iris Chulo will be displayed in the ballroom. In her work, Chulo aims to connect with the natural world, something she shares with Julie de Graag and M.C. Escher. She explores our relationship with other life forms in Feel Free to Talk to Plants (2024), with which she graduated from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague this summer. Chulo sees our relationship with nature becoming weaker and weaker, even though this ancient connection can facilitate peace and reflection today. She found inspiration in witches and herbalists, who use rituals to strengthen their connection with nature.

Central to Chulo’s work is the art of slowing down, which is also reflected in her creative process. She worked on these cyanotypes for weeks in the darkroom at the Royal Academy, where Julie de Graag also studied. The slow photographic process of cyanotype, one of the oldest photographic techniques, results in Prussian blue prints. Chulo made her own paper and created numerous cyanotypes of abstract structures, human figures and plants. She deliberately chose medicinal plants and trees with a symbolic historical significance, such as thistles and olive trees. Her work stems from an admiration for nature, which Escher and De Graag also expressed in their own way.

It was not just collectors and fans of M.C. Escher who acquired his work during his lifetime. Friends and family also owned prints by Escher, like this lithograph below, Drawing Hands, from the estate of Antoinette Schottelius-De Ridder, better known as Tony de Ridder. Escher in The Palace recently received this work on long-term loan, and correspondence between Escher and De Ridder has, to our great delight, been donated to the museum.

Tony de Ridder (1886-1971) was a poet and author. She spent much of her life in Oosterbeek, in the east of the Netherlands, where she got to know the Escher family. As the daughter of a pastor, she was raised in the Christian faith, and her religion became the core of her life. She gave lectures on faith, published writings on it, and worked as a religious studies teacher, and M.C. Escher was one of her pupils. At the Remonstrant church, she taught him the catechism between the ages of seven and twelve. We do not know much about the friendship between De Ridder and Escher, but the printmaker and the idiosyncratic poet stayed in touch for decades. Escher made his first linocuts even before he started training as a printmaker. One of them is an early bookplate for Tony de Ridder. Escher was about 19 years old when he designed and printed it in multiple colours. Escher transformed De Ridder’s initials into ‘Toom dit ros’ (which means ‘Restrain this horse’), in an image that made reference to her surname (which means ‘knight’).

De Ridder kept abreast of developments in Escher’s life. She received her copy of Drawing Hands in 1950. He dedicated it to her with an affectionate message: ‘For Tony de Ridder, with great fondness 23-XI-‘50’. In the years that followed, they remained in contact, as evidenced by a letter to De Ridder of 1961, in which Escher expressed his wish to visit Oosterbeek again. However, his busy schedule prevented him from returning to the place where he had grown up. Three years before his death, they corresponded again, and Escher noted De Ridder’s birthday in his diary, so he would not forget it. They probably had contact in the preceding and intervening years, too, though no evidence has survived. We know for certain, however, that De Ridder and Escher had not lost touch. De Ridder died on Christmas Day 1971, followed three months later by Escher.

17 September 2024 to 16 February 2025

Maurits Cornelis Escher achieved world-wide fame with his optical illusions but it is less well known that he also made art for public spaces. In 1959-60, he designed a tile tableau with fish and birds, inspired by his famous print Sky and Water I (1938), for a villa in the south of Amsterdam. It was commissioned by Wolbert J. Vroom, a great admirer of Escher’s work, who was looking for a black-and-white image to decorate the facade of his newly built home. The Vroom family recently gifted two previously unseen Escher design drawings for this project to the museum. This remarkable gift also includes the extensive correspondence relating to the commission and family photos of the unveiling of the tableau, which Escher attended. The items will be displayed at Escher in The Palace from 17 September.

A unique commission
Wolbert J. Vroom and his wife Antonia H.M. Dreesmann contacted Escher in 1959 because they wanted a title tableau for the facade of their house at Dirk Schäferstraat 59 in the south of Amsterdam. Escher proposed to base the tableau on his print Sky and Water I in which fish gradually metamorphose into birds. The diamond-shaped design would add a diagonal dynamic to the modern villa’s orthogonal lines. Escher had the tiles made by De Porceleyne Fles, the earthenware manufacturer now known internationally as Royal Delft. Escher worked with them on several occasions, including on the production of tiles for schools in The Hague and in Baarn.

The two drawings give us an insight into the design process. One of the design drawings shows the search for the right composition. Escher came up with two variants, one with a horizontal emphasis, the other vertical. He made a drawing of the facade and covered the horizontal design with a flap of paper with the vertical version, enabling an easy comparison of the two options. This should have made it simple for the Vrooms to reach their decision but the extensive correspondence between Escher, Vroom, De Porceleyne Fles and the architect Lau Peters reveals tensions surrounding this important choice. The various parties discussed at length which design it should be before finally settling upon the horizontal, diamond-shaped design. Escher elaborated the design in a detailed drawing, on which he numbered all the tiles with his famous precision, leaving nothing to chance. The fabricator, De Porceleyne Fles, could then set to work.

Ultimately, all parties were enthusiastic about the result, as is evident from a letter from De Porceleyne Fles to Vroom: ‘We all agree that this tableau will truly be a jewel on your home.’ The tiles were delivered and installed in the spring of 1960 and unveiled in the presence of Mr and Mrs Vroom, the architect Lau Peters and Escher. The tableau can still be seen on the villa on Dirk Schäferstraat.

The design drawings, photographs, letters and a few spare tiles can be seen in a specially designed display in the museum. Willem de Winter, appraiser from E.J. van Wisselingh & Co. and expert at Tussen Kunst & Kitsch, helped with the appraisal and is excited by this wonderful discovery: “The highlights of this exceptional gift are the drawings of the tableau. You rarely find drawings of this kind today. And although it is an unknown design by Escher, it is a recognisable image because of the characteristic fish and birds. What a find!”

 

As a curator at Escher in The Palace, I’m always looking for work by M.C. Escher to add to the collection. A small number of prints by Escher that we do not have in our collection have been on our wishlist for years. They are rare, however, and difficult to come by. Near the top of the list was Escher’s woodcut White Cat (1919), a tender image that Escher made of his pet while he was studying in Haarlem.

When, last December, we received the opportunity to acquire this piece, we did not hesitate for a moment. And it really seemed that fortune had smiled on us as, when we removed the print from its frame we found, to our great surprise, an unknown (but incomplete) text by Escher under the mount. It took some puzzling out, but we have now managed to reconstruct the majority of the text, which gives us a glimpse into the mind of the young artist, who was experimenting with the possibilities afforded by graphic techniques.

A furry friend

The white cat in the print symbolises Escher’s time as a young man in Haarlem. In 1919 Escher went to study at the School of Architecture and Decorative Arts. He moved to Haarlem, and took board and lodging at number 11 Zijlstraat. He shared his modest accommodation – consisting of a sitting room and a bedroom – with a white cat that was given to him by his landlady.

The cat became a favourite subject for Escher. He filled a sketchbook with drawings of his pet, and included her in three woodcuts. Twice, the cat was the main subject, while in the third she lies on the sitter’s lap. Escher’s fondness for his pet cat is apparent from the woodcut showing a frontal view of her with her eyes closed. From close up, it becomes clear how painstakingly he cut the fine hairs of the cat’s fur into the wooden block.

We know from his father’s diary that Escher was proud of the print. He took a copy to show his parents in Oosterbeek, and his friend and fellow student Henk Calkoen was also charmed by it. He wrote an article praising Escher’s woodcut for Eigen Haard magazine:

In the creative process, his artist’s intuition forged the harmony between form and content. […] The harmonious distribution of the white and black makes this woodcut fascinating from the very first glance. See the delicate curve in the strong but elegant line of the back; how beautifully the character of the diffident cat is presented, concentrated into a single, almost uninterrupted patch of white, itself so beautifully enclosed by the square. And at the same time we feel the artist coming to us through this artwork.

Counterproof

This version of White Cat is a counterproof, which makes it unique. A counterproof is a print of a print, so it is not a mirror-image of the picture on the wooden block or lithography stone. The technique allowed Escher to print the cat as he saw her. Several direct prints (not counterproofs, therefore) of White Cat are known to exist, in the collection of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. A 1920 issue of Eigen Haard also has a direct print of the cat. Here, you can see that the monogram (the letters MCE which Escher incorporated into his prints) does not appear in mirror-image, as it does in the counterproof.

At the start of his career, especially, Escher often experimented with counterproofs. In 1935 he deliberately made a counterproof of a portrait of his father, explaining:

When portraying someone with highly asymmetrical features in a print, the likeness is largely lost in the proof, which is of course a mirror-image of the original work. I therefore made a ‘counterproof’ in this case, i.e. pressed the first print on paper against another piece of paper while the ink was still wet, cancelling out the mirror effect.

Making a counterproof of White Cat thus brought Escher closer to his own pet, as he later found with the portrait of his father. It is a personal approach that gives us a glimpse of Escher’s reality, and teaches us more about him as an artist and as a person

Discovering the text

Just how interested Escher was in the counterproof technique became clear when we removed the frame from White Cat. When our paper conservator removed the mount, we made an astonishing find: a text about the print written by M.C. Escher himself, hidden underneath. In the text, he explains why he made this particular counterproof. Unfortunately, parts of the text had been cut away or erased. This probably happened decades ago when the work was framed, as the text must have been regarded as less important than the image at the time. Over the past few months, we have been working with colleagues at Escher in The Palace and Kunstmuseum Den Haag to reconstruct the missing parts of the text, and we have now succeeded in making it readable. It has been reproduced at the bottom of the page.

Below the image on the left, Escher wrote ‘Voor Ruut, van Oom Mauk’ (To Ruut, from Uncle Mauk), evidence that he dedicated the counterproof to his nephew. Escher was known as Mauk to his family and close friends, and it was not unusual for him to give a print to a loved one as a gift. Uncle Mauk gave this particular one to Rudolf Escher, son of Berend Escher, M.C. Escher’s half-brother, who was influential in the development of Escher’s printmaking. Later, Rudolf Escher became a well-known composer, but he was still a child at the time of White Cat. This may have been why Escher regarded the print as an ideal gift for his young nephew.

Text on White Cat

The text discovered behind the mount, completed by a team from Escher in The Palace and Kunstmuseum Den Haag, is reproduced below. Most of the text on the paper was still legible, and the English translation is based on the Dutch as transcribed word for word. The words marked in grey had been cut away, so part of each sentence was omitted. The missing parts have been filled in, to make a readable whole. The sentence in yellow had been erased completely, and was no longer legible. We can only guess at what it said.

This M.C.E. is
not mistakenly
reversed. The
print is a counter-
proof, i.e.: a
print of a
print. In the wood
I cut the letters
in mirror writing,
so the print turns
out just right.
When the printing
ink is still wet, it is
however possible
using great
pressure (in the
etching press), to make
another print,
a counterproof, of it.
The counterproof is
thus the mirror-
image of the
print, and is therefore like
the piece of wood.
The advantage of
a counterproof over
a normal print is
that I, e.g. in[..
….] print just as
[I cut?] it. The mirror-image
generally gives a different impression, an
impression I did not intend – the
wrong one. The Pipa is also a counterproof.
The other three are direct prints.

Although this is a fairly factual text about the counterproof procedures, it has brought us a step closer to Escher. It also raises all kinds of questions. What was he thinking at the time? Why did he opt for a counterproof? And at what point in his life did this all happen? It gives us a glimpse of the mind of the young Escher, as he was just embarking on his career as an artist, and still developing his own unique style and technical skills in his formative years.

Escher in The Palace has acquired a unique work by Maurits Cornelis Escher. When the woodcut of a white cat was being removed from its frame, a previously unknown text by M.C. Escher himself was discovered. The text has been examined and interpreted over the past few months.

The woodcut of the white cat had been on the museum’s wishlist for some time. The fact that this print is a counterproof makes this acquisition even more exceptional, and a fantastic addition to the collection. Escher in The Palace houses and shows the largest museum collection of the artist’s work anywhere in the world.

A beloved pet

Escher made this work when he had just moved to Haarlem in 1919, to study at the School of Architecture and Decorative Arts. His landlady gave him a white cat as a pet. The animal became a favourite subject for Escher. He filled a sketchbook with drawings of the cat, and depicted it in three woodcuts. Twice, the cat featured as the main subject, while in the third she lies on the sitter’s lap. All three prints are on display at Escher in The Palace from 25 June to 15 September.

In White Cat the animal is depicted face on, with its eyes closed, in an image that clearly reflects Escher’s affinity for his pet. Examining the print from close by, it is possible to see how painstakingly he cut the fine hairs of the cat’s fur into the wooden block.

The fact that this version of White Cat is a counterproof is apparent from the monogram, which appears in mirror-image. At the start of his career, especially, Escher often experimented with counterproofs, which allowed him to make an impression of the image as he saw it.

Discovery of unknown text by Escher

When the new acquisition arrived at the museum, an important find was made as the mount was being removed. A text about the print, handwritten by M.C. Escher, was revealed. Escher described in detail why he made this particular counterproof. Unfortunately, parts of the text had been cut away or erased. This probably happened decades ago when the work was framed, as the text must have been regarded as less important than the image. But Escher experts refused to admit defeat, and set to work like true detectives. After thorough research, they managed to fill in parts of the missing text, to make it readable again. Unfortunately, however, one sentence had been erased so completely that it can no longer be reconstructed, so we can only guess what it might have said.

Dedicated to nephew

The print is dedicated to M.C. Escher’s nephew Rudolf Escher, who became a well-known composer. Escher wrote the dedication below the image. He would often give prints to friends and family. Since Rudolf was still a child when the print was made, Escher probably regarded it as an ideal gift for his beloved nephew.

Cat art competition

To welcome the acquisition to the museum, Escher in The Palace is organising a cat art competition for children and adults. Everyone is invited to email a picture of their drawing, print, collage or painting of their favourite cat to the museum by 21 July. The entries will be examined and assessed by a professional jury, consisting of Jet Boeke, who draws the famous orange tomcat Dikkie Dik, Angelo Rens of The Hague animal hospital and ambulance service, and Judith Kadee, curator at Escher in The Palace.

Read more about the cat art competition

M.C. Escher absolutely loved his pet cat, which he depicted in several woodcuts, including this one, White Cat (1919) – a print that Escher in The Palace managed to acquire recently. To celebrate this unique new acquisition, Escher in The Palace is organising a cat art competition for children and adults. So why not get creative and amaze us with a drawing, collage, painting or print of your favourite cat?

Send in a drawing, print, collage or painting that you have created of your own or someone else’s cat to the museum before 22 July. An expert panel of judges will look at and assess all submissions. We will announce the winner on International Cat Day on 8 August. The winner will receive a fantastic package of prizes, including a private guided tour of Escher in The Palace, a high tea for two people at Hotel Des Indes in The Hague and two tickets to the new Dutch feature film Dikkie Dik en de verdwenen knuffel. Keen to take part?

The judges are: Jet Boeke, illustrator of the famous orange tomcat Dikkie Dik; Angelo Rens, Director of the Animal Hospital and Ambulance Service Foundation in The Hague and surrounding area; and Judith Kadee, Curator of Escher in The Palace.

Competition	Cat art competition
For whom	Children and adults
Deadline	21 July 2024
E-mail to	info@escherinhetpaleis.nl
What should you bear in mind?	Your artwork can be a drawing, print, collage or painting. No photography or three-dimensional work (sculptures, ceramics, etc.) You must have created the artwork yourself Submissions are only allowed by e-mail Please state your name and age in your submission

Ode to the Cat
Oh, feline wonder, sleek and sly,
Like a whisper, pure delight,
Full of confidence, so flamboyant,
A silent hunter, day and night.

With grace unmatched, you leap and bound,
In every movement, art is found,
A purr, a stretch, a languid pose,
In every gesture, calm repose.

Oh, cat of wonder, so full of spark,
With eyes that shine in the dark,
To you, we bow, in awe and cheer,
The noble feline, always near.

The five Wadden Islands in the north of the Netherlands provide a home for locals but are also a popular holiday destination. Although part of the Netherlands, the islands feel like a foreign country, if only because of the ferry trip you have to make to reach them. Mainlanders flock to the area for the sea air or to soak up the island atmosphere. This attraction is not new: the area was already popular with holidaymakers when M.C. Escher was a boy. His family visited Ameland during the Easter holidays in 1898, when Escher was still in the womb, though his mother decided not to go on the trip because she was pregnant with ‘Maukie’.*

Escher later paid several visits to the Wadden Islands. Sources on his life show that he was on Terschelling and Vlieland during the First World War (1914-1918).** Because foreign travel was not possible at that time, he travelled around his own country with his friends Jan van der Does de Willebois and Bas Kist, occasionally accompanied by his father. Escher had developed a love for photography after being given his first camera in 1913. He took it with him everywhere, and certainly to document trips such as these.

Escher also enjoyed drawing on the islands. A fine example of a drawing he made there is his portrait of a man from October 1920, now in the collection of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag. He has captured the man’s characteristic head and moustache, in profile with his gaze ahead of him and a cap on his head. The work has an angular style that is atypical for Escher, with a pronounced contrast of light and shade. Fortunately, it is easy to identify the sitter thanks to Escher’s inscription at the top right: Pieter-Jan Zvtphen Texel X-’20. This short title refers to the summer of 1920, when this Pieter-Jan was his host on Texel. Thanks to Escher’s father, who kept an extensive record of his life, we know that Maurits returned on 13 August from Texel, ‘where he lived for approx. 3 weeks with a farmer Zutphen, at De Koog, mostly with Jan Willebois. He made many drawings there, including of his host and his 14-year-old daughter.’ Escher probably worked up the sketch he made of his host into this detailed ink drawing after he returned home.***

There are several Escher drawings of the Wadden Islands, but they are in private collections. Escher visited Terschelling more than the other islands, both in July 1919 and early September 1922. He was there with his friend Jan, who is possibly depicted in this drawing, asleep in a chair on a terrace. It is a busy, rapid pen drawing with bushes suggested by the smallest marks. In this respect, it differs completely in style from the geometric approach in his portrait of Pieter-Jan Zutphen and his later, famously precise works, which he evolved through a process of experimentation. The view from the terrace of the Midsland guesthouse on the Westerdam, now The Witte Handt, is recognisable to the residents as the Baaiduinen polder with the Brandaris lighthouse in the distance.****

On 13 September 1922, less than two weeks after his last visit to Terschelling, Escher travelled to Spain and Italy. It sparked a long-standing fascination with Spanish-Islamic art and Italian landscapes, as a result of which Escher’s interest in depicting the Dutch landscape quickly faded into the background. Although the Italian landscape differs greatly from that of the Wadden Islands, he found the peace he was looking for in both environments. In both places he could walk for hours and immerse himself in nature, an essential experience for Escher.

With the exception of a few visits, he would not return to the Netherlands for almost twenty years. He almost certainly didn’t visit the Wadden Islands again, perhaps only in his thoughts.

Sources

[*] Wim Hazeu, M.C. Escher, Een biografie, Meulenhoff, 1998, p. 19-20
[**] Wim Hazeu, M.C. Escher, Een biografie, Meulenhoff, 1998, p. 35
[***] M.C. Escher, His Life and Complete Graphic Work, edited by J.L. Locher, Abradale Press, 1982, p. 19; Levensschets G.A. Escher, National Archive of The Netherlands, inv. no. 2.21.371, 80, p. 172 (13 August 1920)
[****] M.C. Escher, His Life and Complete Graphic Work, edited by J.L. Locher, Abradale Press, 1982, p. 23; Wim Hazeu, M.C. Escher, Een biografie, Meulenhoff, 1998, p. 43 and 78; Levensschets G.A. Escher, National Archive of The Netherlands, inv. no. 2.21.371, 80, p. 16 and 23 (4 and 25 July 1919); ibid., 83, p. 156 (1 September 1922)

Last summer, Escher in The Palace received a special donation from Escher expert and mathematician Doris Schattschneider. She donated a Koh-I-Noor tin by Verkade, inspired by the Koh-I-Noor, one of the world’s most famous diamonds. This Verkade tin was an important inspiration for a tin that Escher designed in 1963.

Escher was asked in 1963 to develop a tin drum to mark the 75th anniversary of tin manufacturer Verblifa (De Vereenigde Blikfabrieken). Escher initially hesitated to accept the commission. After all, he did not have to do it for the money. But his doubts gave way to enthusiasm when he saw a Koh-I-Noor tin by Verkade. When he saw the tin, Escher said, “Look, the design of this drum fascinates me. For it is part of a regular icosahedron […]”. He would accept the commission only if the design could be an icosahedron (twenty-faced polyhedron), inspired by the Koh-I-Noor tin. And so it came to pass.

After various preliminary studies, Escher designed an icosahedron covered with a tessellating motif of starfish and shells. The pattern is reminiscent of Escher’s mezzotint Sea Shells (1949) and repeats to display the beautiful symmetry of the polyhedron. The tin was filled with chocolates and was a gift for business associates. In total, Verblifa manufactured 7000 of them. It was a costly project, as production costs were very high, at 8 guilders per tin. The most expensive tin at the time cost at most 1.75 guilders. Due to the large size, extra chocolates were needed to fill it, which contributed to the increased price.

The linked triangular faces of Escher’s Verblifa tin resemble the Verkade Koh-I-Noor tin, which is shaped like an octagonal antiprism. Verkade has been making rusks, biscuits and chocolate since the late 19th century. The tin was first issued in 1931 and contained typical Verkade biscuits. In advertisements, the tin was referred to as a gem because of its striking shape, which reflected sparkling light from different angles.

Escher in The Palace is very grateful to Doris Schattschneider – the American mathematician who has been studying the work of M.C. Escher for several decades – for her donation, which deepens our understanding of Escher’s sources of inspiration. The tin is on display beside the icosahedron at Escher in The Palace since 27 March.

Escher in The Palace has had its audio guides for visitors made accessible to the hard of hearing. A specially developed technology was used to this end. The launch has been held in honour of World Hearing Day on 3 March.

Listening to an audio guide is challenging for people with hearing difficulties. Audus, a Dutch start-up seeking to improve the lives of those experiencing hearing loss, has developed a technology to help them. Escher in The Palace’s audio guides have now been edited with the software Knisper, making them much easier to comprehend. This improvement will be audible for everyone, including people who wear hearing aids. People who are not quite so aware that their hearing is deteriorating will particularly benefit. Knisper will even be beneficial to visitors without hearing difficulties, especially if there is a lot of background noise.

Managing Director Paul Broekhoff is proud that Escher in The Palace is in a position to offer this technology to visitors:

‘It goes without saying that we’re keen to ensure that everyone can enjoy the work of M.C. Escher. This technology will enable a much wider group of people to listen to an audio guide at Escher in The Palace, immersing them all the more in the wonderful world of Escher. We’ve already got a version of our Highlights tour specially for blind and visually impaired visitors too. It provides a comprehensive audio description to familiarise them with Escher’s work.’

Escher in The Palace offers two English audio guides: a Highlights tour encompassing 14 of Escher’s most significant works and the ‘Emma’s Winter Palace’ tour on the magnificent Lange Voorhout location. The audio guides will now be more readily comprehensible to users, even if their hearing is not quite as sharp as it used to be. These tours can be followed using your own headphones and mobile phone and are available on the website or via izi.TRAVEL. The Highlights tour is available in eight languages: Dutch, English, German, French, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Ukrainian. The Winter Palace tour is available in three languages: Dutch, English and German. The Highlights tour for the blind and visually impaired is available in Dutch.

Hearing loss
In the Netherlands, more than two million people are experiencing hearing loss, for the most part age-related. The latest figures from the WHO suggest that over 1.5 billion people worldwide are affected. These people often resort to using hearing aids, but not all of them do. Acceptance of deteriorating hearing is a process that can take years. Hearing aids tend to enter the picture at a later stage. And yet they are no panacea. Hearing continues to be a day-to-day struggle for this group of people, particularly from a social perspective. Hence Escher in The Palace is proud of this solution, which will help both the hard of hearing and those with sharper hearing on their visit to the museum.

Margriet Schavemaker will take up the post of general director of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag, the Fotomuseum Den Haag, KM21 and Escher in The Palace from 1 June 2024. She succeeds Benno Tempel, who was appointed director of the Kröller-Müller Museum at the end of last year. Schavemaker is currently artistic director of the Amsterdam Museum and professor of media and art in museum practice at the University of Amsterdam. She previously served for many years as a curator and manager of education, interpretation and publications at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

You can read more information on Kunstmuseum Den Haag’s website here.

At night, when it is dark outside, the doors of museums in The Hague open especially for young cultural night owls. On Saturday 16 March between 5pm and 9pm, there will be a special programme full of cool activities on the theme of ‘Time Travel’. With one ticket, you can visit the most beautiful cultural locations in The Hague and Voorburg. Of course Escher in The Palace will participate again!

Maurits Cornelis Escher loved to travel. He often set out, wandering through inhospitable landscapes in Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and Tunisia. By boat, by train, by bus, on a donkey, or simply on foot, Escher embarked on expeditions that took him everywhere. Armed with a camera and sketchbook, he mapped out each place. No mountain was too high, no valley too deep, no river too wide, and no distance too far.

Get your tickets here!

Our programme

Warm sounds

Times
17.00-17.25
18.00-18.25
19.00-19.25
20.00-20.25

Discover the warm sounds of the handpan during a live performance amidst the works of Escher. Enjoy sparkling music that truly seems to come from another time. Relax and immerse yourself!

Faraway stories

Times
17.30-17.55
18.30-18.55
19.30-19.55
20.30-20.55

At Escher, everything always continues; he was fascinated by eternity. This is especially evident in his famous Metamorphoses. During Museum Night, the Thunder Elf brings Escher’s love for eternity to life. Based on the Metamorphoses of the Roman poet Ovid, he tells exciting stories. Join him on a journey back in time, accompanied by the beautiful sounds of a Celtic harp.

Design your own imaginary space

Times
17.15-18.00
18.15-19.00
19.15-20.00
20.15-21.00

Have you been inspired by all that time traveling through the palace? Join our workshop ‘Create your own imaginary space.’ Artist Inge Aanstoot will teach you how to make your own collage. Let yourself be inspired by Escher and other creators you encounter during Museum Night. Play, slide, and mirror to create your own world on paper!

Exploring with Escher

Times
Continuous

Are you ready for an expedition? Explore the world of Escher and learn how contemporary artists draw inspiration from his work. How? With our scavenger hunt! Navigate your way through the life and work of Escher and explore his fascinating artworks.

Every year is special at Escher in The Palace, but 2023 was truly one for the books. This year marked 125 years since M.C. Escher was born and that fact was celebrated far and wide. These days, we especially look back on all the wonderful exhibitions and events we had the pleasure of organising. The Escher jubilee year was celebrated with wonderful exhibitions at our museum and also at Kunstmuseum Den Haag. Fortunately, the final exhibition Just Like Escher can still be seen until the 24th of March 2024. The anniversary year was also celebrated with numerous activities in The Hague. In addition, we continued to post as many stories about Escher’s life and art as possible. All the wonderful images we shared this year can be found in this special end-of-year animation. We thank everyone for their support over the past year and hope to inspire you again in 2024 with our stories and images!

Inspiration can be taken not only from a direct mentor (who is essential for each and every art student) but also from masters from past eras. Escher, for instance, learned not only from his teacher Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita but also from looking to the past. In turn, De Mesquita drew on work by an old master too. Looking to precedents produced by artists from before one’s time is extremely common. Working in the style of or imitating well-known pictures is one way for artists to draw on the techniques and ideas of their heroes and to challenge themselves by looking at art from another person’s perspective.

One of Rembrandt’s most captivating paintings, The Jewish Bride, hangs in the Rijksmuseum and has been seen by a vast number of artists. Vincent van Gogh put his admiration for this painting into words in 1885*:

Do not doubt, and I mean this seriously, that I would give a decade of my life to be able to sit in front of this painting for a fortnight with nothing but a dry crust of bread to eat.

De Mesquita lived in Amsterdam, not far from where Rembrandt spent his most famous years, and he too admired the painting. He even imitated it in print form in 1922. Despite the subject being the same, the result is quite different. The way Rembrandt handles the paint is striking. He applied it with not only a brush but also the back of the brush and a palette knife. The abundance of that paint and its impasto quality contrast sharply with De Mesquita’s woodcut approach. He captures the intimacy in black and white, placing extra focus on the two figures seemingly emerging from the dark surroundings. He used his version of The Jewish Bride in his own lessons. Escher wrote about Mesquita’s version of this work in 1946**:

[…] De Mesquita felt compelled on a number of occasions to recreate an artwork that he admired greatly. As attested to by his woodcut ‘The Jewish Bride’, which he engraved sitting at a little table in the Rijksmuseum.

Escher, too, felt compelled to recreate an artwork, albeit in different circumstances. When he reluctantly moved from a hot Rome to an icy Switzerland, he chose to produce a print based on Hell, one of the sections of The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch. Escher used the strange entity with a human head, trees for legs and a drunkards’ scene inside the body to express his inner dissatisfaction. Bosch’s weird tableaux appealed to him. Unsurprisingly, then, multiple figures from the painting feature in his print Belvedere.

There are plenty more examples of artists who have taken inspiration from past artists. Vincent van Gogh is a good example. In the case of The Jewish Bride, he stuck to just viewing it, but he imitated several works by Jean-François Millet (of whom he was a great admirer), even doing so multiple times in the case of Le semeur (The Sower). He also produced his own interpretations of woodcuts by Ando Hiroshige, a painting by Eugène Delacroix (The Good Samaritan), a print by Gustave Doré (Prisoners Exercising) and a print by Rembrandt (The Raising of Lazarus). He himself was imitated one hundred years after his death when Roy Lichtenstein created his own version of Van Gogh’s The Bedroom in 1992. Van Gogh’s original is clearly recognisable, as is Lichtenstein’s cartoonesque style featuring patterns and primary colours. Another artist whose work has prompted much imitation is Hieronymus Bosch, who was not just a role model to Escher. Numerous artists have found his strange world relatable, particularly the Surrealists. Joan Miró produced his own version of The Garden of Earthly Delights characterised by a much greater degree of artistic latitude, entitled The Tilled Field. Salvador Dali studied Bosch’s work too, even if Bosch’s influence is largely indirect and Dali refrained from copying it.

One subject that past artists featured in their artworks in increasingly new variants is the reclining nude woman whose eyes fall upon the viewer. Many artists have ‘borrowed’ the subject from predecessors and used it to challenge themselves as well as the viewer. The Venus of Urbino is an early example. The title of the painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Titian indicates that it depicts the goddess of love, though it is also an image of general, idealised female beauty. Along with contemporaries such as Lorenzo Lotto, Jacopo Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese, he started to create sensual, idealising portraits of for the most part anonymous women, which would go on to be much imitated. Women in these paintings were both chaste and erotic — a contrast that frequently generated disquietude. The Spanish painter Francisco Goya went one step further with The Nude Maja. The problem was not her nudity but the fact that Goya left the painting devoid of any symbolism that could justify it. He was also the first to show pubic hair on a woman who did not have any characteristics of a prostitute. Both the Venus of Urbino and The Nude Maja were initially owned privately and only seen by a few people. By contrast, Olympia by Édouard Manet was presented publicly at the Salon in Paris in 1865 and immediately caused a scandal. Manet created an image that clearly alludes to Titian and Goya yet also marks a radical break from these precedents. He used a real-life model (his muse, Victorine Meurent, who features in more paintings) and transformed her into a woman of good breeding who is working as a prostitute, as indicated by the black cat with the arched back and the bouquet from a client in the hands of servant girl Laure. The shy, withdrawn facial expression that we find in the Titian and the Goya has been replaced here by a self-confident, assertive gaze. Olympia is nude but in full control.

In the case of the aforementioned examples, the copy can usually be regarded as an homage and the new picture takes its place in a long tradition. This began to change at the start of the 20th century, particularly with the work of Marcel Duchamp. In 1919, he drew a moustache and a goatee on a postcard featuring a picture of the most famous woman in art: Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. The work is in keeping with previous ready-made works by Duchamp, but his satirical approach is manifestly a new chapter in the imitation, copying and recycling of existing work. Duchamp’s approach was oft-imitated, with such work typically being termed appropriation art. Duchamp himself was copied too. A famous example is the work of Sherrie Levine, who produced her own version of Duchamp’s Fountain urinal. Allegations of plagiarism are never far from people’s lips. Such appropriation has prompted several lawsuits on the grounds of plagiarism, including against big names like Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst. Levine, too, landed in hot water with her After Walker Evans series, which saw her take photos of photos by the well-known American photographer that were in a catalogue and present them as her own work.

Artists who take inspiration from previous generations of artists tread a fine line between homage and parody, between admiration and affront. The result always gives rise to new questions, which in turn give fresh impetus to the art debate. Originality in art is important, but art is not created in a vacuum. Each new generation stands on the shoulders of the previous one. This is evident in the exhibition The Man Who Discovered Escher: Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita, and there is ample mutual admiration and respect here.

Sources
[*] Cited in Ernst van de Wetering, ‘Rembrandts schilderwijze: techniek in dienst van illusie’, in: Christopher Brown, Jan Kelch & Pieter van Thiel (eds), Rembrandt: De Meester & zijn Werkplaats. Paintings Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and Waanders Uitgevers, Zwolle, 1991, p. 13
[**] Catalogue of the first postwar exhibition of work by Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 1946

Of course, Escher in The Palace will again participate in Museum Night The Hague. We have put together a great programme that allows you to be amazed, but also to get actively involved. Discover all the highlights here. Of course, during the evening you will be able to enjoy the beautiful prints of M.C. Escher. Will we see you there?

Saturday 7 October, 20.00 – 01.00 o’clock

Magic graphic art

M.C. Escher creates graphic art. Woodcuts, wood engravings, lithographs and linocuts. But how does that work? Unfortunately, he himself can no longer show us, but artist Mieke Robroeks can! During Museum Night, she will be working live with the graphic techniques used by M.C. Escher. Follow her hands and see the magic happen before your eyes.

Time: 20.00 – 00.00

Unlimited Evolution

In his work, master printmaker M.C. Escher plays with perspective, illusions, metamorphoses, reflections and impossible spaces. Corpus Acrobatics drew inspiration from him for a special choreography in which these themes recur. A snake woman takes you through an acrobatic and kaleidoscopic mirror dance, a magical experience in which the human body creates an illusion. During Museum Night you will experience this special performance in the ballroom of Escher in The Palace!

Time: performances at 20.30, 21.00, 21.30, 22.00, 22.30, 23.00, 23.30, and 23.45

Fashion on Escher

What would an M.C. Escher look like as a piece of clothing? As part of the Escher Year 2023, Dutch Fashion Embassy challenged three designers to take inspiration from M.C. Escher for a new fashion collection. During a fashion show at The Fashionweek, the new collections by Studio Hiem, Katie Tubbing and Janne van Wezel will be launched at Hotel Des Indes on October 5th. During Museum Night, six of these looks will be on display amidst the work of M.C. Escher.

Time: continuously

Workshop create your own tessellation

M.C. Escher was fascinated, maybe even obsessed, by tessellations. He could puzzle for hours, days and months on the many ways a plane could be filled with repetitive figures. Would you like to try this yourself? During Museum Night, we are organizing a special workshop in which you can make your own tessellation! The workshop is on a walk-in basis, so you may have to wait a little while.

Time: 20.00 – 00.00

Walking DJ

Dance? Swing? Groove? Chill? Flex? Jump? Vogue? Pose? Everything is possible with our walking DJ who moves freely through the museum and brings the party atmosphere wherever he goes.

Time: continuously

Buy tickets

Flat surfaces were tremendously important to M.C. Escher. A two-dimensional blank sheet of paper gave him the opportunity to explore the infinite and to conjure illusions. On such sheets he would create deceptive three-dimensional worlds in which order and chaos are in conflict, just like in the real world. But despite order frequently losing out to chaos in the real world, Escher turned this on its head. At the awards ceremony for the 1965 Hilversum Culture Prize he had the following to say about it:

‘In my prints I try to convince people that we live in a neat, ordered world rather than in a chaos devoid of standards, as sometimes seems to be the case.’

He often used regular polyhedra – the so-called Platonic and Archimedean solids – to symbolise that order. Two books served as significant sources of inspiration: Algemene mineralogie en kristallografie (1935) by his half-brother Berend, and Vielecke und Vielflache: Theorie und Geschichte (1900) by Max Brückner (1860-1934)*. The latter proved particularly interesting because it featured numerous images, as well as 146 photographs of paper polyhedron models from Brückner’s collection. Escher used these images as sources for his own drawings and models.

The Platonic solids comprise five types of regular polyhedra first described by the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 BC): the tetrahedron, the hexahedron (or cube), the octahedron, the dodecahedron and the icosahedron. The Ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes (287-212 BC) subsequently described the thirteen Archimedean solids – semiregular polyhedra which are variants on the Platonic solids. Escher presents several of these polyhedra in his prints, in some instances in modified form. A side view of a cube with three adjoining facets cropped up in Metamorphosis I and Cycle. Reptiles features a dodecahedron. In Crystal he presents us with a combination of cube and octahedron. And in Contrast (Order and Chaos) and Gravity he uses a star dodecahedron – a dodecahedron featuring a five-cornered pyramid on each surface. In Four Regular Solids he even combines four of these polyhedra: hexahedron, octahedron, dodecahedron and icosahedron. He wanted to throw in a tetrahedron for good measure, but eventually decided not to as this would make things overly complex for the viewer **.

Although he had a serious passion for the two-dimensional in his prints, he occasionally switched to creating a real three-dimensional shape. This was sometimes because he wanted to depict such a mathematical solid in a print and needed a model to be able to get it right. It could also be an autonomous solid that could be regarded as a standalone work of art.

For example, he designed a can in the form of an icosahedron for can manufacturer Verblifa. Verblifa produced 7,000 of these cans in 1963. A decade prior to this Escher himself produced two perspex star dodecahedra. It was a thorough production process, which Escher carried out in 1953 in collaboration with his son George, who was studying at the Technical College of Delft. Keen to perfect the first specimen, Escher went for a second attempt. He etched into the individual pieces of perspex a pattern that gives the impression of being a starfish. George was tasked with gluing together all the parts by hand. This project must have been a veritable puzzle for father and son.

The perspex star dodecahedron is currently on display at Escher in The Palace. It is on loan from a private collection and this is the first time that it can be admired in a museum.

Escher wrote about his print Four Regular Solids ***:

‘If you were to ask me why I indulge in such crazy projects, why I create such absolute objectivities that have been stripped of anything personal, then the only answer I could muster would be that I feel compelled to do so. To my knowledge at least, the issue was never satisfactorily resolved by that group of people comprising Dürer, Pacioli, Barbarbo and even Leonardo around 1500 and 1600. I’ve no doubt that they originally found the matter interesting in the same way as I do: the beauty and order of regular solids is overwhelming […]’

Long tradition

There is a long history of regular, semiregular and self-crossing polyhedra in art and science. The Ancient Greek mathematician Euclid (c. 325 BC – 256 BC) was the first person to describe in his treatise Elements the regular shapes defined by Plato. Physical dodecahedra are known to have existed from as early as the Roman era, though their function has never been explained. Polyhedra not only embody elegance and mathematical precision, but are also richly symbolic. Which makes them interesting to both scientists and artists, who have studied the solids and published on them or incorporated them into their art over the centuries. The most famous example is Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), the Renaissance artist who stood at the intersection of art and science and with whom Escher felt a tremendous affinity. Da Vinci drew the illustrations of regular polyhedra that featured in the first part of Divina proportione (1509) by Luca Pacioli (1445-1517). In turn, Escher would go on to depict the polyhedra in a similar openwork manner in his print Stars.

Their fascination with these polyhedra allowed Da Vinci and Pacioli to rub shoulders with artist-scientists such as Piero della Francesca (c. 1415-1492) and Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). They all had to stay on the right side of religion, however, as it was commonplace for scientists to also be clergymen. The Church was a powerful patron and occasionally opponent too. One of the earliest examples of patronage is the small star dodecahedron found in a floor mosaic (c. 1425) in St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. The mosaic is attributed to Paolo Uccello (1397-1475). Star-shaped polyhedra symbolising God and the Church featured on obelisks and church buildings in Europe during the late Renaissance and subsequent centuries.

Escher was not the first printmaker to produce prints featuring regular polyhedra. In 1514, Albrecht Dürer produced the copper engraving Melencolia I, a print rich in symbolism, which is particularly evident in the contrast between the melancholic seated angel and the linear polyhedron to her left. A cube that raises plenty of questions due to two corners having been cut off. And it is not just the angel who is left to ponder these. Dürer was influenced by Pacioli and he went further by studying and depicting polyhedra. A next step in the study of polyhedra comes in the 1568 book Perspectiva corporum regularium by Wenzel Jamnitzer (1508-1585) and Jost Amman (1539-1591). It is brimming with perspective drawings and engravings of polyhedra, varying from basic shapes such as the tetrahedron or octahedron to all kinds of variants on these. The drawings were done by Jamnitzer and the engravings by Amman.

Kepler-Poinsot

In 1596, the German scientist Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) published the astronomy book Mysterium Cosmographicum. In it Kepler stated that the ratios of distance between the five planets known at the time could be understood in terms of the five Platonic solids enclosed in a sphere. His theory was corroborated once new planets were discovered, but the book once again attests to the extent of scientists’ fascination with these solids. His book Harmonices Mundi (1619) argues the case that everything in the universe is in harmony and that polyhedra and geometry play a significant role in that. Kepler also rediscovered the thirteen Archimedean solids and presented them in this book. In 1809, Louis Poinsot (1777-1859) rediscovered Kepler’s figures and came up with two new variants himself: the great icosahedron and the great dodecahedron. Nowadays the two scientists’ shapes are known as the Kepler-Poinsot (star) polyhedra. Other scientists who got involved with Platonic and Archimedean solids include Daniele Barbaro (1513-1570), Lorenz Stöer (c. 1540-1620), Simon Stevin (1548-1620), Jan Brożek (1585-1652), Jean-François Niçeron (1613-1646), Albert Badoureau (1853-1923) and H.S.M. Coxeter (1907-2003).

Escher’s fascination with regular polyhedra demonstrates that he was far from being a ‘normal’ artist. It is further proof of his unique status as a craftsman in the grey area between art and science. He sometimes felt misunderstood by both camps, but he was happy to sit at the intersection between the two. The perspex star dodecahedron currently on display at Escher in The Palace provides tangible evidence of Escher’s lifelong fascination with the tetrahedron, the hexahedron, the octahedron, the dodecahedron, the icosahedron and all those other polyhedra that attest to order and elegance in what is sometimes such a chaotic world.

Sources
* Visions of Symmetry: notebooks, periodic drawings, and related work of M.C. Escher, Doris Schattschneider, W.H. Freeman and Company, 1990, page 246-247
** and *** Letter to son George and his wife Corrie, 7 May 1961
For this article the following sources were also used:

• Historical Notes on Star Geometry in Mathematics, Art and Nature, by Aldo Brigaglia, Nicla Palladino and Maria Vaccaro, 2018
• Imagine Math 6: Between Culture and Mathematics edited by Michele Emmer and Marco Abate. Springer International Publishing, 2018
• Max Brückner’s Wunderkammer of Paper Polyhedra, by professor G.W. Hart, in Proceedings of Bridges, 2019

The exhibition The Man Who Discovered Escher: Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita does not only feature graphic art by M.C. Escher and De Mesquita, it also features artworks by Spanish artist Susanna Inglada (1983). Inglada’s large-scale, theatrical installations made with wood and paper aim to confront the viewer with the emotions imbued in the artwork. Her work carries political meaning and touches upon themes such as societal powerstructures, corruption and gender inequality. The artist gives voice to these topics through her characters’ expressive facial features and depictions of tangled, struggling limbs.

This exhibition features a selection of Inglada’s artworks that focus on hands. For the three artists whose work is presented – M.C. Escher, Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita and Susanna Inglada – hands are an essential tool for creating. All three understand the skill required to master the arts of drawing and printing, and all three use their hands during the labour-intensive process of creating woodcuts, linocuts or lithographs. Inglada’s hands represent a coming together, or unification of forces and strengths; a connection that is reflected in the relationship between De Mesquita as teacher and Escher as pupil. Inglada is also adept at portraying hands in a way that exudes emotion. Her powerful works are loaded with emotional meaning around the feeling of loss and liberation, which she conveys to the viewer without any words at all. This gives the audience the freedom to interpret the artworks in their own way. Being placed in the room among artworks by Escher and De Mesquita, a unique and fascinating dialogue between the artists is incited.

The period between 1934 and 1936 is widely recognised as a time of great transition in the artistic oeuvre of M.C. Escher. Gradually shifting his focus away from interpretations of Italian landscapes, Escher began to look for something new to incorporate into his work. This quest resulted in an approach that would become one of his best-known specialisms: merging worlds that do not, or simply can not, co-exist and bringing them together in a single image. In the beginning, Escher started playing with the extreme perspective of a spherical mirror, setting the gaze on himself and his surroundings. Two other early examples of his ideas around merging worlds are the prints Still Life with Mirror and Still Life and Street. Later, this desire to create impossible realities would lead to prints such as Other World, Double Planetoid, Gravity, Relativity, Print Gallery, Belvedere and Waterfall. Escher took an intriguing detour from this path with Dream (Mantis Religiosa), which depicts an impossible ‘reality’ that is explicitly labelled by Escher himself as a dream.

The wood engraving shows what looks like a marble sarcophagus of a religious figure. The mitre on his head indicates that the figure is a bishop. On the bishop’s chest sits an enormous praying mantis. Escher places his subjects in a vaulted space that is reminiscent of a church. The image also features a second, separate vault and a third building. The ground on which all of these structures rest suddenly gives way to darkness, suggesting an infinite emptiness.

In a lecture that he was due to give in 1964, but which never took place due to illness, Escher said of the print*:

‘The print Dream combines three distinct elements: first the architecture, a reminiscence of a curious little twelfth-century church in southern Italy. It consisted of loose cross vaults under on overhanging rock. Secondly, the marble sarcophagus with the recumbent figure of a bishop, which l saw in the crypt at Saint Peter’s in Rome. And thirdly, an insect common in southern Italy, a praying mantis. It sat down on the edge of my drawing folder, while l was sketching somewhere in Sicily, long enough to be pictured in detail. My only intention was to suggest an impression of three-dimensionality, of endless depth.’

The elements depicted in this image were thus taken from Escher’s real-life observations. The church is the Porta Maria dell’Ospidale in Ravello, which he first sketched and later immortalised in a print. He encountered the bishop in the Vatican crypt at Saint Peter’s in Rome; the tomb is that of cardinal Pedro da Fonseca (who died in 1422)**. The praying mantis was taken from a sketch made in 1930, after he saw the insect on a visit to Pentedattilo***. A year before this date, Escher had produced a series of prints based on Rome at night, and in 1935 and 1936, he created detailed prints of a grasshopper, scarab beetles and a dragonfly.

At first glance, Dream appears to fit into this series, but that is not the case. In this piece, Escher is side-stepping into a different universe. Although the image combines subjects he observed in real life, the enormous dimensions of the praying mantis, the separate architectural elements, the night-time setting, the ‘floating’ platform and the suggestion of a never-ending space combine to create something that is completely unique. The other-worldly print is reminiscent of surrealism – a movement which was at its zenith in this period and in which dreams play an important role. Escher explores the topic of dreams in his book M.C. Escher: The Graphic Work****:

Is the bishop dreaming of a praying locust, or is the whole conception a dream of the artist?

The theories of Sigmund Freud were a popular source of inspiration in surrealism, with dream interpretation being a particular favourite. While we cannot know for certain, it is possible that Escher was familiar with these concepts. Escher himself raised the question of whether he had dreamt this scene, but never provided an answer. ‘Mantis Religiosa’ is the Greek name for the European praying mantis that Escher depicts in this print. The word ‘mantis’ is Greek for ‘prophet’ or ‘fortune teller’. These semantics suggest a link with Freud’s theory that dreams could predict the future. Escher always emphasised that he did not conceal any messages in his works and that interpretation was up to the viewer – but by combining a bishop and a praying mantis, he does appear to be hinting strongly at irony.

The print is also highly evocative of the threatening, poetic worlds of Giorgio de Chirico, which are centred around empty squares, long shadows, anonymous figures and architectural elements such as arches and pillars. Unlike de Chirico, Escher does not use shadows; his scene is set at night. He creates a minimalist image in which a praying mantis appears to have been disturbed during its nightly ritual. It looks out at the viewer, breaking the fourth wall and adding tension to the piece. Escher’s prints are deliberately open to interpretation and this image is no exception. It is an unsettling, almost sinister piece that stands out as unique in Escher’s body of work.

Source

* and ** The world of M.C. Escher, Nature, science and imagination, North Carolina Museum of Art, 2015, page 114
*** The world of M.C. Escher, Nature, science and imagination, North Carolina Museum of Art, 2015, page 115
**** The 2013 reissue by Taschen GMBH of M.C. Escher: The Graphic Work. Originally published by Royal publishing house J.J. Tijl NV, Zwolle 1959, page 7

A remarkable self-portrait by Rembrandt is on display at Escher in The Palace from 29 November until 29 January. It is a self-portrait with a stormy history, that disappeared off the radar for many years and has now returned to the place where it hung for a long time in the nineteenth century. This painting can be seen in the royal ballroom of the palace, amid M.C. Escher’s prints. Despite the obvious link between this self-portrait by Rembrandt and Lange Voorhout Palace, there also appear to be undeniable connections between Rembrandt and Escher.

Escher’s interest in Rembrandt began early on. He was intrigued by art as an adolescent, but had little curiosity for emerging movements such as Cubism and Dadaism. His preferences lay with the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. As well as with Rembrandt. As a 17-year-old, he already had a reproduction of one of Rembrandt’s most famous paintings, The Sampling Officials (1662), hanging in his room in Arnhem.

A few years later, as a fledgling artist, he created a woodcut of a shell that looks remarkably like one of Rembrandt’s etchings. This marbled cone snail (Conus marmoreus) has a conical shape with a distinctive pattern that caught the attention of both artists. Although Rembrandt was a lot older and more experienced at the time he made the etching, he made the same mistake as Escher: cone snails only exist in right-handed form in nature. Both Rembrandt and Escher depict the snail turning to the left.

Escher shared more interests with Rembrandt, such as – though this was true of more artists – the Fall of Man. Escher even made two prints depicting this Biblical story, in 1920 and in 1927. In the first, Eve reaches for the apple while Adam turns away from her and covers his face with one of his hands. The image is dominated by a huge Tree of Knowledge in which the influence of the then-popular Art Nouveau can be recognised. The second print shows the subsequent scene in which Eve has taken the apple and offers it to the despondent Adam, who realises they have made a big mistake. Here, the snake has been replaced by a lizard-like reptile. The tree is still dominant, but serves mainly as a background. Both prints also show a desolate hilly landscape, the harsh world east of the Garden of Eden that will soon be their home.

Rembrandt created an etching in 1638 showing the same moment as the one featured in Escher’s 1927 woodcut. Rembrandt, a master at depicting people, concentrates on the characters Adam and Eve debating what to do. Here, too, Rembrandt opts for a dragon-like reptile instead of a snake. In doing so, both artists latch onto an interpretation of this Biblical story in which the animal that tempts Eve had legs and claws before the Fall. According to the Bible, it was only afterwards that the animal had to continue crawling as a snake on the ground, condemned to do so by God. Another striking similarity is the presence of an elephant in both prints. The animal symbolises piety and chastity, though also Christ, the only one who can raise those who are fallen. Thus the elephant serves as the counterpoint to the temptation of the apple and the weakness of Adam and Eve. Both Rembrandt and Escher must have been familiar with this symbolism.

Over the course of his career, Escher became increasingly captivated by Italian Renaissance artists, especially when he took up residence in Italy from 1924 onwards. His admiration for Rembrandt remained dormant, albeit still alive in the background, and when he visited the National Gallery in London with his friend Paul Keller in 1957 and came across a painting by Rembrandt, he enthusiastically wrote in his diary*:

Rembrandt (Hendrikje Stoffels) Female Portrait!!

A love that the two artists shared with each other and, for that matter, with many other artists, is their habit of making self-portraits with some degree of regularity. Escher did so 12 times between 1917 and 1950 as prints, several of them in a convex mirror. The very first was a linocut he made as a 19-year-old. He was still so inexperienced that he did not cut his monogram in mirror image. He therefore rejected the work. Later, he did add the monogram in mirror image, but did not print it. It was printed posthumously. He was a quick learner, however, and the self-portraits from 1918 and 1919 attest to his progression. Escher may have created 12 self-portraits in print form, but Rembrandt surpassed him many times over. During his lifetime, he created some 80 self-portraits, 40 of which were paintings. Far more than was the case with Escher, these self-portraits give a glimpse into the artist’s development and ageing process. If you line them all up, you can see Rembrandt changing before your eyes.

A final similarity is that both artists can be characterised as craftsmen. Rembrandt had learned the painter’s trade as an apprentice and later became a member of the Guild of St. Luke as an artist from Amsterdam. He was an entrepreneur who made money doing commissioned portraits. Rembrandt was known in his time as the best portrait painter in the city, immortalising many wealthy Amsterdam residents. In his etched portraits, he mainly depicts acquaintances from his immediate surroundings and these are therefore more informal. Being portrayed by him did really mean something, though. Escher mainly created work for himself, but subsequently tried to sell it. He saw himself primarily as a graphic artist – a profession that required a lot of practice for him to master. However, Escher struggled with the word ‘artist’. In a speech he gave when he was awarded the Hilversum Culture Prize in 1965, he reaffirmed this and referred to himself as a craftsman:

“If I am not mistaken, the words ‘art’ and ‘artist’ did not exist during the Renaissance and before: there were simply architects, sculptors and painters, practising a trade. Printmaking is another one of these honest trades, and I consider it a privilege to be a member of the Guild of Graphic Artists. […] I am a graphic artist with all my heart and soul, though I find the term ‘artist’ rather embarrassing. That is why, Mr Mayor (and this concludes my lecture), I would like to receive this prize as ‘just’ a graphic artist, if I can say it like this. I hope you approve of me accepting it like this.”

Source
[*] Wim Hazeu, M.C. Escher, Een biografie, Meulenhoff, 1998, page 378

2022 has come to an end and it has been another special and unforgettable year. These days, we look back on all the wonderful things we have been able to organise this year. No fewer than four temporary exhibitions have been held in the museum, in addition to the permanent presentation of Escher’s art!
We also aimed to share as many stories as possible about Escher’s life and art with you through our social media channels, our website and the in-depth articles we wrote. All of the wonderful images that we have shared this year can be found in this special end-of-year animation. We thank everyone for their attention and support over the past year and hope to inspire you again in the Escher anniversary year 2023 with our stories and images!

This week, a long-concealed self-portrait of Rembrandt is set to return to The Hague. From Tuesday 29 November onwards, it will be on display in Escher in The Palace, which was home to it from 1850 to 1894, when the palace belonged successively to Prince Hendrik of the Netherlands and his sister Great Duchess Sophie. The painting has not been seen in the Netherlands since 1898 – for nearly 125 years – and has not even been on public display since 1967. The self-portrait is being given a unique spot among the famous self-portraits by Dutch printmaker M.C. Escher, whose work has been on display in the palace since 2002. The Rembrandt will be exhibited here until 29 January 2023.

Eventful journey

This unique event is the result of recent research into the painting’s history by Rembrandt specialist Gary Schwartz. Schwartz drew on numerous unpublished documents in the Royal House Archive, the archives of the American and German governments, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, German courts, as well as private correspondence between Hereditary Grand Duchess Elisabeth of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and the German-American Rembrandt specialist Jakob Rosenberg. In his publication Rembrandt in a Red Beret – The Vanishings and Reappearances of a Self-portrait, Schwartz reconstructs the adventures of this significant work.

The painting first surfaced in 1823, when it was purchased in Brussels by the future King Willem II of the Netherlands (1792-1849). The work was relocated to The Hague in 1839, after which it hung in the newly constructed Gothic Hall of nearby Kneuterdijk Palace from 1842 onwards. The death of Willem II resulted in 1850 in the break-up of his outstanding art collection through auction. And yet the self-portrait did not go very far. It ended up in Lange Voorhout Palace, which belonged to Willem Frederik Hendrik (1820-1879), Prince of Orange, known as Hendrik the Seaman. The painting remained here for at least 35 years, most likely 44 years.

Its subsequent history reads like a detective novel. After being bequeathed within the royal family to Hendrik’s sister, Princess Sophie (1824-1897), the work was taken to the German city of Weimar, where she was Grand Duchess. There it remained until 1921, when it was stolen from the Weimar Museum. It was missing until 1945, when it suddenly resurfaced in the USA.

The American government seized the self-portrait and sent it back to Germany in 1967 with the intention of having it returned to the museum in Weimar. Once in Germany, it was successfully claimed by an heiress of the last Grand Duke, Hereditary Grand Duchess Elisabeth of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1912-2010). Once again, the canvas disappeared from public view. Until now, 55 years on.

Attribution to Rembrandt

It was taken for granted that the painting was a genuine Rembrandt until 1969, when a German-Dutch art historian Horst Gerson suggested that it might be by or in imitation of Ferdinand Bol. Although Gary Schwartz maintains that no Bol expert has ever entertained this idea, the Rembrandt Research Project did actually take it seriously. Gary Schwartz: ‘Doubts about who produced the painting were fuelled by the damage sustained by the self-portrait after it was stolen in Weimar. Incompetent overpainting misled people as to the work’s quality. Comprehensive new technological research work carried out by the renowned Schweizerisches Institut für Kunstwissenschaft in Zürich has revealed that only the face is work by the original painter. And anyone looking at that face will struggle to regard it as anything other than a self-portrait by the master himself’. In his new publication, Rembrandt in a red beret – The vanishings and reappearances of a self-portrait, Gary Schwartz argues that the work deserves to be acknowledged as by the master himself. He interrogates and refutes objections to accepting the painting for what it appears to be, a Rembrandt self-portrait.

Publication

Gary Schwartz, Rembrandt in a Red Beret – The Vanishings and Reappearances of a Self-portrait, 336 pages, bound, full colour, ISBN 9789462585348, WBOOKS, €59.95.

18 February 2023 – 1 October 2023

In 2023 it will be 125 years since Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) was born. Escher is a celebrated artist, but this would not have been the case had it not been for his mentor and good friend Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita (1868-1944). From next February, the striking work of De Mesquita will hang alongside that of his most famous pupil at Escher in The Palace.

De Mesquita was not only a magnificent artist and printmaker, he also taught graphic techniques. It was in this capacity that he first met a keen young man at the Haarlem School of Architecture and Decorative Arts. Encouraged by his parents, Escher initially chose to specialise in architecture, but soon reconsidered when De Mesquita saw his early work, and convinced his student to switch to graphic art. The two artists developed a lifelong artistic and personal connection.

Escher was a good student, and during his training he carefully observed the style and subjects of his teacher. De Mesquita depicted people and animals using strong lines, focusing on the essence. His animal portraits are full of character, made during visits to Artis zoo in Amsterdam, where he would study the animals. De Mesquita laid the foundation for Escher’s artistic practice, though they each went their own way stylistically after Escher had graduated. They remained in contact, however, and De Mesquita followed Escher’s career with great pride.

Even the Second World War did not stop the two men from remaining in touch. De Mesquita had Portuguese Jewish roots, and they both understood the dangers that he faced. Escher nevertheless continued to visit his old friend in those dangerous times. But his fears became a reality when, on the night of 31 January 1944, De Mesquita, his wife and their son Jaap were arrested and deported. The lives of De Mesquita and his wife came to a tragic end in Auschwitz. Their son Jaap also did not return from the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The unsuspecting Escher arrived at the empty home and studio of his former teacher on 28 February. It had been looted, and was in disarray. He gathered together as much of De Mesquita’s work as possible, thus saving a large proportion of his collection. Escher was thus able to honour his mentor in the years following his death.

Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita is known as the man who discovered M.C. Escher. But the exhibition will show that he was more than that. He was a powerful artist who made timeless prints. Escher in The Palace is to bring together the work of these two inspiring artists, reuniting the masters.

Want to know more about Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita? Click here.

Twenty years ago, on the 16th of November, 2002, Escher in The Palace was inaugurated by Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende. Over the past two decades, the museum has grown into a visitor magnet where anyone can enjoy the world-famous graphic artist M.C. Escher. Over the course of that period, Escher in The Palace has become the place where you can learn and see all about Escher’s life and work all year round. In addition, during the two decades, Escher in The Palace has always paid attention to the history of Lange Voorhout Palace, the former winter palace of Queen Emma, the Queen Mother. This joyful event is set to be celebrated with all kinds of festivities during our anniversary weekend on 19 and 20 November.

Free entry for anyone called Maurits or Emma

Is your name Emma or Maurits? Then you can enter the museum for free this weekend by showing your ID!

High Tea giveaway

We also have a special giveaway. Drop us a message via mail, Facebook or Instagram and let us know about one of your special memories of visiting Escher in The Palace or of M.C. Escher by 14 November. Out of all the entries, we will choose the post that touches us the most. The winner will receive from us a High Tea for a maximum of 4 people at the famous Hotel Des Indes next door and a visit to the museum. A royal afternoon!

Rinus Roelofs lecture

Artist and mathematician Rinus Roelofs will be giving a series of lectures (in Dutch) on Saturday 19 November about the wonderful universe of M.C. Escher. Roelofs’ spatial works are often inspired by M.C. Escher and in 2018 Escher in The Palace organised a successful exhibition around Roelofs in which his works were displayed among Escher’s prints.

Create your own linocut

On Sunday, people young and old will get a chance to create their own linocut in a workshop and discover their own creativity. You can join between 12.00 and 16.30 hours.

So come along and enjoy with us this wonderful combination of Maurits and Emma that has been on display on Lange Voorhout for two decades.

In October 1952, M.C. Escher created a series of woodcuts on the subject of the four elements. It was a commissioned work for collector and graphic art fanatic Eugène Strens and his wife Willy. The prints feature the four elements: earth, air, fire and water. For each design, he highlighted one of these elements on a vignette sent by the Strens couple as a New Year’s greeting. The image was accompanied by their names and the greeting ‘Felicitas’ (Latin for ‘happiness’) along with the coming year. For the tessellations with ants, birds, fish and demons, Escher was able to fall back on his notebooks, but each of these four prints is still slightly different from the drawings he based them on.

Eugène Strens (1899 – 1980) was trained as an engineer, but his great passion was graphic art. Hailing from the province of Limburg, this notary’s son inherited a considerable fortune at a young age (his father died in 1919 and his mother in 1924), allowing him to invest money and time in it*. He started with philately, but over the years a fascination with typography, numbers and puzzles, printmaking, letterpress and bookplates was added. In the early 1930s, he quit his job at the Octrooiraad (Patent Office) in The Hague and took up his hobby full-time**. He was always out and about looking to expand his knowledge and to add to his collection. Furthermore, he knew many artists, printers, antiquarians and other collectors and kept his correspondence with these individuals in his collection too. The collection also contains a great many books and journals on graphic art and work by artists such as Max Liebermann, Käthe Kollwitz, Jean Cocteau, Gustav Klimt, Emil Nolde, John Buckland Wright, Franz Marc and M.C. Escher. Because Strens knew many artists personally, he also managed to acquire sketches, preliminary studies, proofs, wood blocks and copper and etching plates. But the most significant and most striking aspect is his collection of bookplates (ownership marks printed on paper that book owners put in their books).

Eugène Strens was a great lover of this form of applied graphic art and his passion for collecting led to what was then the largest private collection of bookplates in the world. His collection includes copies of celebrities like Dvořák and Stravinsky, heads of state like Queen Emma, the Queen Mother and Egyptian King Farouk, as well as the dictators Mussolini and Hitler. Besides collecting bookplates, he also promoted himself as a commissioning party. On numerous occasions, Strens commissioned artists to design bookplates for him. He adopted a highly critical stance in that process and was not shy about correcting artists and steering the design in a direction he liked. The collection would grow to some 120,000 bookplates and occasional graphic works, 15 metres of archival material and 32 metres of reference books. In 1995, the entire collection was acquired by Museum Meermanno (now House of the Book) in The Hague.

Besides graphic art, mathematics was also a great passion for Eugène Strens. Especially mathematical puzzles. It was a love he shared with Martin Gardner. As Gardner in turn was a great lover of M.C. Escher, the Dutch graphic artist forms a bridge between the Dutch collector and the American mathematician. Strens’s collection of mathematics books ended up at the University of Calgary in Canada. There, a special conference on recreational mathematics was held in August 1986 to celebrate the creation of the Strens Collection. Under the title The Lighter Side of Mathematics: Proceedings of the Eugène Strens Memorial Conference on Recreational Mathematics and Its History, a report was also published in book form, featuring a tessellation by M.C. Escher on the cover. Strens’s interest in mathematics naturally drew him to chess. Over the years, he amassed a collection of over 1,000 books on chess problems.

A bookplate is a graphic artwork that says something about the maker and about the recipient in an extremely effective way. The artist has to convey his own signature on a small scale and in such a way that the client, the owner of the books, will be able to recognise himself in it. Because bookplates are reprinted in large numbers – after all, they have to feature in each and every book in the collection – the artwork enjoys a high degree of prominence too. And because the format is small, a bookplate is also a form of graphic art that anyone can afford. The variety of bookplates is enormous and collecting them was a popular pastime. Eugène Strens was aware of this and founded the Nederlandsche Exlibriskring (N.E.K.) together with fellow collector Johan Schwencke in 1932. Its aim was to promote the art and study of bookplates and occasional graphic art. At its peak, this society had more than 700 members, including many foreigners (despite its name). Even then, Dutch graphic art was held in high regard worldwide.

Eugène Strens had already started commissioning artists to design a New Year’s greeting in the 1930s. Strens began corresponding with M.C. Escher in 1946 when colleague Johan Schwencke approached Escher with a view to the latter creating a New Year’s greeting for the N.E.K. This led to correspondence between Strens and Escher and the two continued to correspond until the graphic artist’s death in 1972. Another connection of Strens was fellow collector Karel Asselbergs, founder of the Eenhoornpers and later secretary of the De Roos foundation. Strens and Asselbergs were friends, but they were also rivals – both commissioned artists to design bookplates and New Year’s cards, and every year it was exciting to see what beautiful designs would be created as a result. Escher created New Year’s cards for both collectors, two for Asselbergs and the aforementioned series of four for Strens. Through Escher, Strens also came into contact with the American collector Cornelius V.S. Roosevelt, with whom he also corresponded regularly.

Strens’s commission to Escher for the New Year’s greetings in 1952 was therefore in keeping with a tradition, one that the graphic artist joins with his series of four designs. Yet he also manages to give it his own signature by visualising the four elements in the form of tessellation. In a letter to Strens dated 28 July 1952, Escher explains the technical structure of the designs***:

‘The system of Fire is based solely on glide reflection; in Water, a rotation around a twofold axis, located in the centre of the square, occurs, i.e. all the blue fish are congruent “en bloc” with the brown; Air is a shifting system, in which neither axes nor reflection occurs. The first sketch (“Earth”), which I showed you earlier, is based on another system: in it, there are twofold and fourfold axes.’

This is interesting information for the viewer and those interested in mathematics can delve into these forms of mirroring and the interplay with axes. But even without that information, you can enjoy this beautiful series of prints made for perhaps the most avid print collector the Netherlands has ever known.

Source
[*] Uit de boeken van Eugène Strens, de verzameling Strens in het Museum van het Boek, Walburg pers, 1995, page 62
[**] Uit de boeken van Eugène Strens, de verzameling Strens in het Museum van het Boek, Walburg pers, 1995, page 21
[***] Uit de boeken van Eugène Strens, de verzameling Strens in het Museum van het Boek, Walburg pers, 1995, page 42

Of course, Escher in The Palace will again participate in Museumnight The Hague. We have put together a great programme that allows you to be amazed, but also to get actively involved. Discover all the highlights here. This evening you can also enjoy our temporary exhibition Royal Encounters and, as always, the prints of M.C. Escher! Will we see you there?

Saturday 8 October, 20.00 – 01.00

Impossible Escher?

M.C. Escher is known for his impossible buildings and ingenious tessellations, but how did he create them? He himself can no longer show it, but illustrator Stephan Timmers can! During Museumnight, he will be drawing live, using the impossible shapes and diagrams Escher used as a basis. Watch and see the magic unfold before your eyes.

Escher in private

Museumnight is busy, sometimes very busy. Fun and exciting, but wouldn’t it be nice to be able to look at art in peace and quiet during an evening like this? As if time stands still? That is possible! Come and enjoy a work of art by M.C. Escher in a private room where you, alone (or as a couple), can take your time. An experience you will not forget.

Searching for Escher

Are you a good observer? Does nothing stay hidden from you? Do you think you know M.C. Escher? Then join our Museumnight scavenger hunt, filled with Escher details. Old-fashionedly digital. Scan the code and get cracking. Alone, in pairs or with your whole group. Or battle against each other in teams! Who will score the most points?

Create your own optical illu-selfie

Escher was a master in the use of optical illusions. In various works, he combines this with his own self-portrait. Difficult? Sure, but in our workshop we make it a little easier, giving you the chance to follow in Escher’s footsteps. By tracing the shadow of your profile on paper, you will get a striking self-portrait. Using contrasting lines, you will then turn your profile into a spectacular optical illu-selfie!

Walking DJ

Dance? Swing? Groove? Chill? Flex? Jump? Vogue? Pose? Everything is possible with our walking DJ who moves freely through the museum and brings visitors in all states.

Check the Museumnight website for tickets.

During Art The Hague Escher in the Palace is showing two sculptures by Hans van Bentem, an artist who is inextricably linked to the museum. Since it opened, its rooms have been graced by his huge chandeliers in a whole range of forms, including a skull, a bomb and a spider. The glittering crystal enhances the majestic feel of the palace, and lightheartedly reflect the fantasy element in the work of Escher.

In his SELF-PORTRAITS series, Van Bentem adopts various characters, including a clown, a dictator, a little girl and a Roman emperor, exploring the extent to which he is taken over by the character, and how much of his own personality remains. Thanks to these transformations, the portraits not only reflect Van Bentem himself, but also his audience, who are prompted to consider how overbearing they are, and to what extent their own identity is obscured by them. Van Bentem’s distinctive blue eyes are recognisable in all the images, however, playfully provoking his viewers, as if inviting them to step into the character themselves.

The two sculptures of a girl and Caesar will be on display from 4 to 9 October in connection with Art The Hague, which has named Hans van Bentem ‘icon of Art The Hague 2022’. During the art fair, more of his self-portraits will be on display throughout the city, at locations like Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Beelden aan Zee, De Spelonk and at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KABK).

In general, mirrors reflect reality, but in the world of art, different laws apply. Certainly in the world of Maurits Cornelis Escher. Here, nothing is what it seems. His prints are instantly recognisable, but the man behind them was something of an enigma. He looks at you in mirror prints such as Hand with Reflecting Sphere and Three Spheres II. Confident, empathic. But also composed and perhaps even a little mocking.

In his prints, he created a world full of reflections in which he constantly encountered himself and his themes, and his objects also encounter each other. It was a very important theme to him and these reflections feature in all sorts of ways. Sometimes very directly through the use of a mirror and because a print is always a mirror image of the woodblock or lithographic stone. Sometimes indirectly, through the repetition and reflection that mirroring entails. His prints often feature tessellations with repeating patterns, but also mirrored halves that are superimposed. Well, almost – it can also be that one half subtly differs from the other. Escher saw the world as a place where order and chaos fight for attention, with chaos often triumphing. Creating order out of chaos was an important motive for him and reflections were an important and useful tool to that end.

It is often said of Escher that he was a one-man art movement. He did not fit any of the prevailing art movements and there were virtually no artists working on the same theme, but he was certainly not alone in his fascination with mirrors. Ever since humans first saw themselves and their world reflected in a shiny surface, they have been fascinated by that image. At the end of the Middle Ages, with the rise of the independent craftsman, the use of mirrors also became fashionable. The self-portrait emerged as a way of promoting oneself as an artist. A mirror was very useful for this. The mirror itself, however, was rarely depicted. The artist usually looked directly at the viewer. Albrecht Dürer referred to the mirror in a self-portrait of 1484 by writing on the drawing that he had made it with the help of a mirror. When an artist does show the mirror, the image raises deeper questions about the work and what it means to look at someone’s inverted image. A painted reflection reminds us of the painter’s artistry, his view of the world and his power to shape what we see. Austrian painter Johannes Gump portrayed himself working on a self-portrait with the help of a mirror. A triple self-portrait, in other words. The American painter and illustrator Norman Rockwell did the same over 300 years later, placing his work among self-portraits by Dürer, Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Picasso and illustrating the long history of the art form.

Powerful examples of those early works in which mirrors play an important role include Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife (1434) by Jan van Eyck and Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror (1524) by Parmigianino. With Van Eyck, the mirror is a subtle but essential part of the representation. With Parmigianino, the work itself is actually a mirror. The Flemish artist Clara Peeters mainly produced still lifes, but she often used the mirrored curved surfaces of caps, lids and jars to present a miniature self-portrait. A characteristic feature of these three examples is the use of a convex mirror, with the reflection being distorted at the edges. The artist thus emphasises that the mirror image is something other than the subject that is reflected. It becomes a metaphor for another world. It was a way of looking at things that fascinated Escher immensely. He made several self-portraits with these spherical mirrors.

The significance of mirrors in art is characterised by ambiguity. Does the reflection reveal the truth or instead present an illusion? Does it show what is normally hidden? Does the reflection invite self-reflection or is it a sign of superficiality? Take Narcissus, for instance, who saw himself in the surface of the water and was unable to tear himself away from that image. An artist can play with this double meaning by, for example, suggesting that the reflection shows the truth, thus imposing an interpretation on the viewer. The mirror may reveal a character the viewer would otherwise not see. In Escher’s Still Life with Spherical Mirror, the newspaper, the book and the simurg (the Persian mythical creature that frequently features in his prints) feature twice, but the mirror also shows Escher himself and the rest of his study. The reflection thus reveals the hidden. In Las Meninas (1656-1657), Diego Vélazquez depicts the Spanish King and Queen alone in the mirror. Their daughter and her court are central. The artist himself is also prominently featured, looking straight at the viewer. He seems to be painting the royal couple, but that is not certain. His canvas can only be seen from behind. Vélazquez plays with the relationship between painter and viewer, between reality and illusion. Escher did something much simpler yet at the same time more radical in Still Life with Mirror. The image is so ‘ordinary’ that the reflection in the mirror is bound to tell the truth, and yet this is not the case. Because of this ambiguity, a work in which a mirror plays a central role soon acquires a symbolic charge. The reflection suggests a deeper truth, an interpretation that primarily occurs in the mind of the viewer, incidentally.

The Belgian surrealists Paul Delvaux and René Magritte used mirrors to illustrate their own themes. For example, the mirror image in Magritte’s La réproduction interdite is not mirrored at all. The title can be read as ‘depiction prohibited’ though also as ‘depiction impossible’. In Delvaux’s Le Miroir the mirror functions as an allegory: the reflection comments on the figure sitting in front of it. The reflection reveals a hidden world, as in Escher’s Still Life with Mirror. These artists use their images to highlight the fact that a painting or print is not a representation of reality, a subject that is also typical of Escher.

‘Vanitas’ is another art theme that is markedly intertwined with mirrors. A vanitas image is about the transience of life and the certainty of death. A skull is often used for this purpose, sometimes in combination with a mirror. A woman looking at herself in a mirror, accompanied by her earthly possessions or by ‘death’, is also a common way of visualising this. Together, they comment on young and old, on life and death, and on the inevitability of time.

Escher, too, played with the vanitas theme. In his print Eye, you see a skull reflected in the pupil of one eye. His eye stares out at you, and in its centre is the symbol of the transience of life. For Escher, however, Vanitas no longer had the connotations that it did for medieval and Renaissance artists. With a little intervention, he gives the viewer a push to think about themes such as death, eternity, introspection and reflection. The contemporary artist Jelle Korevaar does something similar with … (Dotdotdot). Korevaar produced an installation centred on a skull. A skull that cries endless tears of oil due to an ingenious construction. The works function as mirrors in which the viewer sees his own mortality reflected. What does it mean to be human, is there a soul and when does a human life end? Korevaar also touches on the humanity of robots, our dependence on fossil fuels, humankind as creator and autonomy versus heteronomy. Do you take your fate into your own hands or do you place it in someone else’s? Both Korevaar’s art and Escher’s art mirror the soul.

Mirroring and symmetry thus play a major role in Escher’s oeuvre, but he also takes liberties with these principles. The left-hand side of his work resembles the right-hand side, but differs in subtle and sometimes obvious ways. Below are a number of examples. Compare the print with a mirrored version by moving the slide back and forth.

Day and Night

Encounter

Predestination (Topsy-Turvy World)

Convex and Concave

Escher in The Palace is proud of its latest acquisition: a mechanical sculpture by Jelle Korevaar. This contemporary artist makes distinctive kinetic installations, striving for an image that merges aesthetic with social criticism. Korevaar’s work, entitled … (Dotdotdot), will be displayed this summer alongside Escher’s print Eye. This famous mezzotint is one of Escher’s reflective masterpieces, in which you see a skull reflected in the pupil of an eye. A mechanical skull is also central to Korevaar’s work, one that continuously weeps thick tears of oil. In … Korevaar plays with the same themes as Escher’s Eye, such as death, eternity, introspection and reflection.

… is an infinitely continuous movement: the skull cries incessantly. This infinite movement is another theme that fascinated M.C. Escher, as is evident from prints such as Reptiles, Cycle and Möbius Strip. In Escher’s two-dimensional world on paper, it is difficult to evoke the suggestion of movement. However, there is one print in which he does succeed in doing so: Waterfall. In it, he depicts water that seems to flow endlessly. If you set that infinitely flowing water alongside Korevaar’s sculpture, you see two examples of perpetual motion. Imaginary devices that can remain in motion indefinitely and through that movement can potentially also generate energy. In other words, they are imaginary and impossible in reality. Escher does this by showing the eternal movement on paper, thus creating eternity in the mind of the viewer. In Korevaar’s artwork, the work is able to continue indefinitely thanks to the inbuilt energy source and the infinitely turning wheels; the optical illusion of Escher’s perpetuum mobile is a reality in Korevaar’s skull.

With both artists, the viewers see the work, but they are also presented with their own mortality. What does it mean to be human, is there a soul and when does a human life end? These are general themes that touch everyone, but for the artist there is also a personal element.

… came about after a friend of Korevaar contracted cancer. His own speechlessness led to the title of this work. In it, the vulnerable human and the invulnerable machine converge. … also poses questions about the humanity of robots, our dependence on fossil fuels, humankind as creator and autonomy versus heteronomy. Do you take your fate into your own hands or do you place it in someone else’s? Korevaar’s moving objects are mechanical, but nevertheless evoke all kinds of emotions. They are beings that you can make contact with, as exponents of a new world in which man and machine come together. In the case of both Korevaar and Escher, art holds up a mirror to us.

… can be seen this summer as part of the exhibition Playing with Mirrors from 14 June to 4 September.

8 September to 6 November 2022

Escher in The Palace is set to host a royal encounter this autumn. The work of 10 artists based in The Hague will be on display as part of the Royal Encounters exhibition, a dialogue between tradition and experimentation, between past and present. Escher in The Palace invited the artists to produce new graphic work, drawing inspiration from Lange Voorhout Palace and its principal resident, Queen Mother Emma. The artists were challenged to step outside their comfort zone for this exhibition, as they are ordinarily engaged in a wide array of different disciplines, from major architectural installations to photography. Their innovative approach is yielding a colourful palette of artworks. A kaleidoscopic perspective on history which shows that graphic art is more than two-dimensional work on paper. From an imprinted robe to a silk screen window to a golden etching: the possibilities of the graphic medium are endless.

Royal Encounters, which is being held on the occasion of the Graphic Art Triennial 2022, provides a contemporary take on Escher in The Palace’s two fundamental pillars, combining Escher’s penchant for the graphic medium with the museum’s iconic setting. A palace that continues to inspire people to this day due to its baroque regal rooms and stories about Queen Mother Emma.

Whilst producing their new work, the chosen artists were closely supervised by the Grafische Werkplaats in The Hague, where they got acquainted with various graphic techniques. A small presentation of test prints and preliminary sketches for the work on display at Escher in The Palace is running in parallel at the Grafische Werkplaats.

Artists

Ai Hashimoto
Arike Gill
Hanna de Haan
Koos Breen
Lotte van Lieshout
Marleen Sleeuwits
Nynke Koster
Thijs Ebbe Fokkens
Yaïr Callender
Zeger Reyers

14 June to 4 September 2022

Escher in The Palace will be looking in the mirror of M.C. Escher this summer. Escher’s world is a mirrored world – a game of repetition and reflection, looking and being amazed. His self-portraits in convex mirrors show the graphic artist himself in just such an alternative world. The reflections in natural scenes or small Italian streets betray Escher’s love of the possibilities that reflections bring. This summer, you will experience Escher’s fascination in Escher in The Palace. A fascination that continues to grip contemporary artists to this day.

A beautiful example of this are the mirrored spheres by Arnout Visser (1962). In the early years, this glass artist contributed to the success of Droog Design with his designs and he always looks for striking forms in his glass art. His Explosion Spheres are mirror balls on steroids: explosions of reflections in which he blows liquid glass through a thin metal net, thereby creating a ‘frozen explosion’. It is difficult to control this burst of bubbles, so each sphere is unique and reflects the viewer differently. A technical tour de force that results in a miniature world with dozens of different reflections.

In the permanent exhibition on the second floor, you can admire the reflective artworks of glass artist Tomas Hillebrand and optical glass masters Václav Cígler and Miloš Balgavý. In the optical illusion cabinet by Ad van der Kouwe and Don Satijn, your gaze is drawn forever downwards. In addition, the youngest museum visitors can discover the world of M.C. Escher’s mirrors by taking part in a playful family quest. This summer, an explosion of mirrors will ensure unique encounters between art and people.

Art as a mirror of the soul

The new acquisition by the contemporary artist Jelle Korevaar, entitled … (Dotdotdot), will be on show at the same time. Korevaar’s work is displayed next to Escher’s print Eye – one of Escher’s reflective masterpieces, in which you see a skull reflected in the pupil of an eye. Korevaar plays with the same themes in his skull, such as death, eternity, introspection and reflection. A mechanical skull that continuously and incessantly cries thick tears of oil. With both artists, the viewer sees the work, but they also look their own mortality in the eye.

… is an infinite movement – the skull cries endlessly. M.C. Escher was also fascinated by this form of infinity, as can be seen in his prints Waterfall and Möbius Strip. It is not possible in reality, but on paper Escher creates eternity in the mind of the viewer. Thanks to the built-in energy source and the continuously rotating wheels, Korevaar does manage to achieve eternity. The optical illusion of Escher’s perpetuum mobile is a reality in Korevaar’s skull.

To create confusion. That was what God had in mind when he made the people who were building a tower to heaven all speak different languages. In no time at all, it was chaos, and the construction was stopped immediately. If you can no longer talk to each other, how can you continue to build together at such a height?

In 1928, M.C. Escher produced a print of a building that symbolises the confusion between people, but which Escher’s approach makes even more alienating: the Tower of Babel. Escher would go on to become world-famous for his graphic art brimming with optical illusions, in which he defied gravity, created endless staircases and transformed birds into fish. Impossible constructions have an important place in his later prints, but in 1928 they are not yet a fixed theme. His early work consists mainly of early woodcuts of people and unparalleled depictions of nature, in which he explores his talent for the graphic arts. In the prints from the beginning of his career, he occasionally explored biblical themes too. For instance, he depicted Adam and Eve in Paradise, and Escher enjoyed some success with his series of the Six Days of Creation from 1926.

Two years after the Days of Creation series came another biblical print: Tower of Babel. Central to this large, imposing woodcut is a high tower, which we see from an extreme bird’s-eye view. In the story in Genesis 11:1-9, the Babylonians build this tall building that is supposed to reach to the sky. God is not pleased with this and wants to punish their hubris. He causes the builders to suddenly speak different languages, so that they can no longer work together. According to the biblical story, this is also the moment when people spread all over the world because of the different languages they speak. The tower itself is named Babel, which can be translated as ‘confusion’. A fitting name for the chaotic scene that must have taken place on the gigantic structure, and for the far-reaching consequences of this newly created division.

When Escher wrote an analysis about the woodcut Tower of Babel in 1959, his first sentence immediately referred to the confusion of tongues. Escher’s preference for this form of disorder comes as no great surprise. A large, impossible building that causes confusion: this sounds like the ideal subject for the printmaker. In later prints such as Waterfall (1961), Belvedere (1958) and Relativity (1953), the amazement at the impracticability of structures that Escher himself devised is key. By then, the artist was much further along in his artistic development, and he had already been approaching architecture with a healthy dose of imagination for many years. In his younger years, Escher briefly studied architecture at the insistence of his parents. Although this did not turn out to be a great success for him, his fascination with the creation of buildings continues to recur in his work, albeit with more imagination than during his studies. He reflects on his student days in an interview in 1968:

“And I never had any desire to build houses. But I did like mad houses.”

The Tower of Babel is, as it were, a way station in his fascination with impossible buildings. The height of the construction makes it an almost impossible building, but it is possible as an image. As a viewer, it doesn’t occur to you that you might not be able to stand on it. The architecture of Escher’s version of the tower is not innovative in itself, but with his print he really adds something to a subject often depicted in art history. In other works of art, such as the famous painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the view of the tower is usually straight on. The Tower of Babel is also commonly depicted from below. In his print, Escher takes a radically different approach. By opting for the extreme bird’s-eye view, we are looking down on the tower from far above. This makes it very easy to spot the confusion that exists among the black and white figures. On the top floor of the tower, the figures stand with their hands spread, confused by what has just happened. Two layers down, little men lie on their bellies, looking down from a great height, confused. In this state of confusion, no one can continue what they were doing. As spectators, we look on helplessly. Or are we, the viewers, actually God, who deliberately brought about this chaos? Escher does not answer this question: he leaves it open to the interpretation of the viewer.

It was a fact of life for Escher that his health deteriorated during the late 1960s. He struggled with it his entire life, but this particular decade was a succession of good and bad spells. During the good spells, he was alert and active; during the bad ones, poor health dominated his life. In the spring of 1969 he had a good spell again and he filled his time with a number of lectures, produced 40 prints of Day and Night (although he thought that this was a waste of his precious time) and devised and created a new print. *

It was working on something new that made him especially happy. In a letter to his son George, he wrote that he was ‘wild with excitement’ about Snakes. In the winter of 1967/1968, he had extended his Metamorphosis II to Metamorphosis III, but the last new print preceding it originated from autumn 1966. He therefore devoted himself wholeheartedly to this new stream of creativity, despite being afflicted by poor health. The development process took a great deal of energy, and he often had to stop work in order to take a break.

Escher created numerous preparatory drawings, showing how he grappled with and relied on the network of rings that both increase and decrease in size. He purchased a book on snakes to use as reference material. The biological subject of the print is the grass snake, a choice that he felt correlated nicely with the final image he wanted to create. But he had a problem when it came to the English name, as he noted in a letter to collector Roosevelt: **

The title is “Ringsnakes”, which does not fit biologically.

The English name for the Dutch ‘ringslang’ is ‘grass snake’ and not ‘ring snake’. The end product has nothing to do with grass, which is why the English name for the print became Snakes.

Snakes features three snakes whirling through a network of large and small interlocking rings. The network of rings is also a ring, and the heads and bodies of the snakes escape from it at 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 o’clock. The heads form a triangle with the point down, the bodies a triangle with the point up. Escher uses three wooden blocks, one for each colour. By printing each block three times around a central point, he creates a continuous circle. In total he prints 12 copies. Because the print is in three colours, and he is using the same blocks for this, he is forced to complete the 12 copies over 108 runs to achieve the desired result.

He wrote about it to his good friend Arthur Loeb: ***

Meanwhile, I am working hard on a new colour woodcut that has to be printed from 3 boards, each filling a sector of 120°, so that I will have to rotate 9 times around a central pin in order to get a complete print. I don’t imagine that this will be “masterpiece” (although we should really pretend to believe this of each new piece of work), but I’m extremely satisfied because my hand doesn’t shake at all, and my eyes are still good enough for such precision work, thanks to a magnifying glass lit up by a circular neon tune (which doesn’t heat the wood!). I’ve been doing this kind of work for over fifty years now and nothing in this strange and frightening world seems more pleasant to me. What more could a person want?

To Bruno Ernst he wrote: ****

It is chain mail with small rings on the edge and also in the middle of a circle, and large rings in between. Snakes are to wind through the largest holes.

He, in turn, was impressed by the result: *****

There is no trace of fatigue, illness or old age. What is noticeable, however, is a greater modesty with regard to the depiction of the infinite. In his earlier prints, Escher pushed himself to the limit: he used a magnifying glass to cut figures smaller than half a millimetre. In Snakes, however, he makes no attempt to go that far until the rings visually disappear into the dense fog of tiny figures. As soon as the suggestion of ever smaller figures is made, he stops.

Ernst raises an interesting point here. From the preliminary studies, it is clear that Escher’s hand was still perfectly capable of handling minute details. In the woodcut, however, he chose not to go that far. He had reached a stage where he realised that it was enough to suggest infinity.

The result reflects themes such as infinity, symmetry and reflection and echoes earlier prints, such as Whirlpools, Sphere Spirals, Knots and Path of Life I, II and III as well as prints in which he used platonic bodies, such as Contrast (Order and Chaos) and Gravity. But it is mainly a variation on his Circle Limits, the ultimate form for infinity that he had discovered more than ten years earlier after contact with the Canadian professor H.S.M. Coxeter. He also creates a variant of the ouroboros, the snake that bites its tail and symbolises infinity and the cyclical nature of things. However, the biting is not depicted here and the cycle is created mainly in the viewer’s mind.

Escher’s body may not have been cooperative, but his hand was steady, and there was nothing wrong with his brainpower or imagination. Given the fanaticism with which he threw himself into the print, he must have known, or at least suspected, that this could well be his last. And that is indeed what it turned out to be. He forges all themes and previous prints into a new form and in Snakes creates something very special and unique. It is a resounding final chord to an exceptional oeuvre.

Film

Unique film material of Snakes is available, showing Escher at work on the print. In the fragment in which he cuts into a wood block, he is working on a proof. One of the final blocks can be seen when he is printing.

Highlights

Snakes is also part of our Highlights audio guide.

Source
[*],  [***], [****]Wim Hazeu, M.C. Escher, Een biografie, Meulenhoff, 1998, page 489
[**], [*****] Wim Hazeu, M.C. Escher, Een biografie, Meulenhoff, 1998, page 491

After weeks in which the doors of the museum have been closed, we are very happy to welcome visitors to our museum again. To celebrate this, and to give as many people as possible the chance to come and admire the exhibition, we have extended Andy Warhol: Obsession with Editions! The ten beautiful portraits can now be admired in the palace until 29 May.

Our doors are open for a museum visit. We are very excited to welcome you again and make sure you have a fantastic visit! From 25 February, it is no longer necessary to choose a time slot or to show a coronavirus entry pass. However, you can reserve a ticket online. This remains valid for one year after purchase. You can also buy a ticket at the box office.

Wearing a face mask is no longer required, but you are of course free to do so. However, we do ask you to stay at home if you have any coronavirus related symptoms and to follow the government’s hygiene measures in the museum as well.

In December 1958 and January 1959, Escher worked on a new print that he intended to display at an exhibition in Museum Boymans in February. Adopting the group name Vier Grafici (‘Four Graphic Artists’), he was exhibiting with Harry van Kruiningen, Wout van Heusden and Harry Disberg. A company he had been in before. He wrote about the print in a letter to his son George and his wife Corrie:*

“After a week of endless dispiration, I again find myself exploring tetrahedral and octahedral space: caves and caverns, wondrous pillars, abysses and vistas, all rigorously four-sided and eight-sided. My plan now is to finally have the cross-eyed flatworm I love swim in it.”

He continued in the next letter:**

“Tetrahedrons alternating with octahedrons, for example, can be placed against each other just as well as ordinary rectangular building blocks, in order to fill the space continuously. This print shows a building made of these two basic forms.”

The result is the lithograph Flatworms. An ingenious variation on Relativity and House of Stairs, which is populated not by humans but by one of the simplest life forms on earth: flatworms. A life form for which Escher had a soft spot, as he said himself. Perhaps because they are symmetrical: their left and right sides are mirror images of each other. He knew the creature from Animals without Backbones, a biology textbook that he had studied with great interest. The book deals with all manner of invertebrates, and Escher was fascinated by these strange life forms. It inspired him to produce several prints, including Plane Filling II, which features a large number of invertebrates. His memories of his time at the Municipal Grammar School in Arnhem may also have played a role. He had a Natural History teacher there, the zoologist Anthonie Cornelis Oudemans (1858-1943), who had obtained his doctorate in flatworms and undoubtedly talked about them in his lessons. Escher was not particularly interested in school, but he got on well with Oudemans (and with his art teacher F.W. van der Haagen). Writing about Oudemans, he said that he:***

“was greatly admired for his extensive knowledge and the generosity with which he communicates this.”

Oudemans wrote a book about sea snakes that went on to become famous (The Great Sea Serpent, 1882) and generated plenty of scepticism among his colleagues. It is not known whether Escher was familiar with this book.

Because flatworms generally live in water, Escher situates their home underwater. An illusion he achieves by (for example) introducing horizontal accentuation that illustrates the movement of the water. Just like the curl-ups in House of Stairs, the flatworms live in their own habitat. As if they were inhabitants of a peculiar aquarium.

Escher describes the structure like this:****

“Bricks are usually rectangular, because in that way they are most suitable for building the vertical walls of our houses. But anyone who has anything to do with the stacking of stones of a non-cubic type will be well aware of other possibilities. For instance, one can make use of tetrahedrons alternating with octahedrons. Such are the basic shapes which are used to raise the building illustrated here. They are not practicable for human beings to build with, because they make neither vertical walls nor horizontal floors. However, when this building is filled with water, flatworms can swim in it.”

Hence the flatworms’ habitat is composed entirely of tetrahedrons and octahedrons, interlinked four-sided pyramids. It takes some spatial imagination to envisage such a space, but Escher did not shy away from it. He was already familiar with these forms, three-dimensional models of which he had hanging in his studio.

Although the space in Flatworms has no vertical walls and no horizontal ceilings or floors, Escher points out in his correspondence with Bruno Ernst that:*****

“Despite the absence of horizontal and vertical planes, stacking tetrahedrons and octahedrons vertically allows one to build columns or pillars that, when viewed as a whole, stand vertically.”

The print shows five of these columns, of which the two on the right are two different variants. The rightmost one is a stack of octahedrons and the one next to it a stack of tetrahedrons. The play of symmetry and mirroring, the accurate perspectival depiction of the sloping walls and floors, and the way in which the tetrahedrons and octahedrons manifest themselves in this space is like a complicated puzzle. A puzzle that must have caused Escher a lot of headaches, but must also have given him a great deal of pleasure.

Structures based on triangles, tetrahedrons and octahedrons or with sloping walls and ceilings are rare but do occur. And they usually produce special results. Consider in this regard the work of Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895 – 1983), for instance. His geodesic domes, self-supporting structures consisting entirely of triangles, attract particular attention. He had not invented these himself, by the way, but he acquired the US patent on them and managed to publicise the domes. They were used for large buildings (the Montreal Biosphere built for Expo 67), though also for experimental houses and in a science-fiction film like Silent Running. The storage containers in it are built like truncated tetrahedrons. In science fiction, these geometric shapes symbolise technological progress. Biosphere 2 is an American research facility in Arizona that was once built to demonstrate the viability of closed ecological systems to enable human life in space. The buildings contain many triangles and geodesic domes. Think also of the famous cube houses in Helmond and Rotterdam, the walls and floors of which are straight, but the whole space is tilted.

Source
* Letter to George and Corrie, 21 December 1958. Wim Hazeu, M.C. Escher, Een biografie, Meulenhoff, 1998, page 405
** Letter to George and Corrie, 18 januari 1959. Wim Hazeu, M.C. Escher, Een biografie, Meulenhoff, 1998, page 405-406
*** Wim Hazeu, M.C. Escher, Een biografie, Meulenhoff, 1998, page 32
**** The 2013 reissue by Taschen GMBH of M.C. Escher. The Graphic Work. Originally published by Royal publishing house J.J. Tijl NV, Zwolle 1959, page 14
***** The Magic Mirror of M.C. Escher, Bruno Ernst, Taschen, 1976/2018, page 101

2021 has come to an end and it has been another special and unforgettable year. We look back on all the wonderful things we have been able to organise this year. No fewer than four temporary exhibitions have been held in the museum, in addition to the permanent presentation of Escher’s art!
All of the wonderful images about our exhibitions, activities and the in-depth articles on our website can be seen in this special end-of-year animation. We thank everyone for their attention and support over the past year and hope to inspire you again in 2022 with our stories and artworks!

Escher in The Palace enriches its playful second floor with three glass artworks by Tomas Hillebrand. As an artist, Hillebrand (Amsterdam, 1977) graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy with large charcoal drawings, but after his training he turned to making glass sculptures. Whereas glass is often used to make functional objects, Hillebrand’s fascination lies in creating autonomous works of art. In his recent work, the spherical glass sculptures are often silvered, so that the viewer sees himself reflected in the glass.

The sculptures can now be seen as a permanent part of the interactive exhibition on the second floor. The three glass sculptures are characterised by their reflections; a theme that Hillebrand shares with Escher. The mirrors suck the viewer into the sculpture. In doing so, one sees oneself reduced in size through the convexity of the mirror in a space that appears much larger. The reflection distorts the viewer’s world and creates its own new reality. A link can be made between these glass sculptures and prints by Escher, such as Hand with Reflecting Sphere (1935). Both artists share a preference for distorting effects, through which optical games and pleasure also occupy a central place in their work.

In November 1929, Escher produced a print that for once was not the direct result of a journey he had made that spring. From 1925 to 1936, he followed a fixed pattern of travelling through Italy in the spring, to the Abruzzi, Sicily, Calabria or the Amalfi Coast. In the first few years, places around his home town of Rome or in the nearby province of Viterbo were added. He also travelled to Corsica and Spain. In the autumn and winter following these trips, he fleshed out his sketches and photos into prints. But in May 1926, things were different.

Escher visited a number of places in the province of Rome by bus and train: Palestrina, Tivoli, Poli and Genazzano. Little is known about this journey. He took no photographs. Once back in Rome, he did not create any prints as a result of this trip either. Unsurprisingly, he was very busy with other things. A much-attended exhibition of Escher’s work was held in Rome from 2 to 16 May. In June, he and Jetta bought another house in Rome, which still needed a lot of work. The house was needed because of the imminent addition to their family. Their first son, George Escher, was born on 23 July. More than three years later, in November 1929, Escher did eventually produce a print depicting the journey: the lithograph Genazzano, Abruzzi. The latter portion of the title was a mistake on Escher’s part. Genazzano is not in the Abruzzi region, which Escher often visited, but in the Lazio region (province of Rome).

During his first travels through these regions, Escher discovered his love for high, solitary and seemingly inaccessible towns that stand out against the rugged landscape. Sometimes situated inland, sometimes on or against a rocky outcrop by the sea. Take a look at (for example) the photos he took of Positano and the island of Capri (with Jetta, Amalfi Coast, May 1925), Capranica (Viterbo, April 1927), Cefalù (Sicily, December 1927), Corte (with father-in-law Arturo Umiker, Corsica, May 1928) or Cerro al Volturno (Abruzzi, May 1929). It is a subject that would continue to fascinate him throughout his life, even after he had permanently settled in the flat Netherlands.

Escher’s approach to depicting Genazzano is different to that used in Goriano, Sicoli (also from 1929), Morano (1930) or Santa Severina (1931). Whereas he captures these places from a distance, in Genazzano he chooses to zoom in. The differences in elevation within the town become clear, but as a viewer you get nothing of the context. The result is a linear print in which the houses rise almost like residential blocks. A plethora of windows make the lithograph reminiscent of Montecelio’s large stencil drawing from 1924.

On 2 July 1965, journalist, poet, critic and essayist G.H. ‘s-Gravesande, known by his nickname Hein, died. Although Escher and Hein had been friends for over 30 years, the artist did not attend the cremation. He was engrossed in working on the print Knots, a subject in which he had become completely absorbed *. This would hardly have surprised ‘s-Gravesande. He published several articles and a booklet on the man whom he also greatly admired as an artist. Hein ‘s-Gravesande was one of the first critics to pay serious attention to the work of M.C. Escher, and the graphic artist owes much to him.

Hein ‘s-Gravesande was born Goverdus Henricus Pannekoek in Buitenzorg in the former Dutch East Indies on 18 January 1882. He came to the Netherlands with his parents at the age of six, first to Haarlem and later to The Hague. From a young age he aspired to write, with this ambition later being nurtured by his friendship with Jan Greshoff, who was six years younger. In 1904, he started working as a general proofreader and reporter for the liberal newspaper Het Vaderland in The Hague. Although as a sports enthusiast he himself was a goalie for The Hague football club Quick for many years, and in 1925 was even the founder and editor-in-chief of Chantecler, Quick’s official magazine, he would become best known as an art journalist. The art section of Het Vaderland was highly regarded over that period, and its reputation was further enhanced by the arrival in 1933 of Menno ter Braak, a man whose talents were as wide-ranging as those of ‘s-Gravesande and with whom he would develop a close relationship. In 1947, he retired as editor of Het Vaderland, for which he received the knighthood of Orange-Nassau. However, he remained a staff member of the newspaper.

He had the following to say on his years with Het Vaderland:

‘I am terribly unimportant, but the only thing I am proud of is that I have been art editor con amore for many years. I have seen many people start with enthusiasm; I consider it my only merit that my enthusiasm has not waned’.

For decades, ‘s-Gravesande carved out a career for himself as an art journalist, a profession he defined very broadly. He wrote biographies and memoirs about authors such as Jakobus Cornelis Bloem, Jan Jacob Slauerhoff, Jan Campert, Edgar du Perron, Adriaan Roland Holst, Martinus Nijhoff, Arthur van Schendel as well as his colleague and friend Menno ter Braak. For the monthly magazine Den Gulden Winckel, he interviewed a whole series of well-known writers in the 1920s and 1930s, some of these interviews appearing in book form in 1935 (Sprekende schrijvers [Talking Writers]). He wrote a whole series of bibliographies, essays on visual and graphic art and literature and several anthologies of poets. He made his debut as a poet as far back as 1902 with verses published in the magazine De Arbeid (Labour). In 1909 his poem Sneeuwlandschap (Snowy Landscape) appeared in print, and he published his first collection in 1911. He would continue writing poems until well after his retirement, though he would never really become famous for them. He was also a bibliophile, a lover of books as desirable collector’s items. ‘s-Gravesande could greatly enjoy a beautiful print or a special typography. Hence, he also wrote several essays on the state of printing and engraving.

‘s-Gravesande first saw the work of Escher when the Emblemata series appeared in book form in the summer of 1932. He decided to visit Escher while he was staying with his parents in The Hague **. Shortly afterwards, he gave a lecture on graphic art on the occasion of the opening of the Joh. D. Scherft art gallery on Laan van Meerdervoort in The Hague ***. Escher was also featured at the opening exhibition, and ‘s-Gravesande praised his work. A year later, on 28 October 1933, he returned to the same gallery to open a solo exhibition on Escher, once again singing the praises of his prints ****. He continued following Escher over the ensuing years. In 1938, he wrote an article on Escher in Elsevier’s Maandschrift, followed in 1940 by the book M.C. Escher en zijn experimenten. Een uitzonderlijk graficus (M.C. Escher and his Experiments. An Exceptional Graphic Artist.) In the latter publication, he discusses the life and work of Escher extensively, analysing several prints in detail, including the Emblemata series, Development I and II, Metamorphosis II, Sky and Water I and II and Cycle. This was the second publication confirming Escher’s artistic credibility and place in the art world, following art historian G.J. Hoogewerff’s laudatory article on him in Elsevier’s Maandschrift in 1931. In his own text, ‘s-Gravesande displays an excellent understanding of the themes that fascinated Escher. That insight was undoubtedly aided by the personal bond that the two had built by this point.

M.C. Escher and Hein ‘s-Gravesande maintained a long friendship, which began in 1932 and lasted until the death of ‘s-Gravesande more than 30 years later. Over the years, they continued to see each other regularly and wrote each other many letters, not only corresponding on personal experiences but also discussing the individual prints that Escher was working on at the time. In his letters, the graphic artist would express doubts about a subject or technique he was using. In addition, ‘s-Gravesande regularly got to hear about the time it was taking Escher to print all his woodblocks himself, leaving little time for new prints. When ‘s-Gravesande moved to Bilthoven in 1952, Escher visited him more often. The two-hour walk was a great opportunity for him to stretch his legs. Hein ‘s-Gravesande became the person Escher could always turn to. A trusted confidant for the graphic artist who sometimes found himself struggling.

After the death of ‘s-Gravesande, Escher wrote to his daughter *****:

‘Our first contact in 1932 soon developed into a close friendship. I can still see him sitting at his desk in the noisy, brightly lit “hutch” in the “Vaderland”, which he shared with Menno ter Braak. I also often visited him on Valkenboschkade and we never lost touch, not even when he retreated into the woods of Bilthoven. Many times, though not often enough, I visited him there, that lonely stoic, hard on himself, rejecting outside help, but always warm-hearted and keenly interested in the outside world.’

Source

[*] and [*****] Wim Hazeu, M.C. Escher, Een biografie, Meulenhoff, 1998, page 458
[**] M.C. Escher, His Life and Complete Graphic Work, edited by J.L. Locher, Abradale Press, 1982, page 36
[***] Het Vaderland, 10 September 1932
[****] Het Vaderland, 28 October 1933
This article is partly based on a publication by Fred Batten in the Yearbook of the ‘Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde’, Leiden, 1968-1969. E.J. Brill, Leiden 1971

M.C. Escher is undoubtedly the most famous graphic artist in the Netherlands. But he was certainly not the only one, as evidenced by our exhibition Graphic Grandeur: Escher and his Contemporaries. Escher was in contact with fellow graphic artists and in a number of cases this also led to joint exhibitions. He was trained as a graphic artist and was indeed an artist, but he struggled with that label all his life. He situated himself more in the tradition of artist-as-craftsman. To be able to make graphic art, it was first and foremost important to have a solid mastery of the necessary techniques. That was true for Escher himself as well as for colleagues. He always appreciated meeting graphic artists who were also masters of their craft. He liked to surround himself with these craftsmen.

The main place he did this was in an association. The Vereniging tot bevordering der Grafische Kunst (‘Association for the Advancement of the Graphic Arts’), usually called ‘De Grafische’, had been founded in 1912. That association organised one or more exhibitions every year, often in reputable museums and exhibition spaces. Throughout its existence, De Grafische meant a lot to its members, not least because of the revenue generated by the exhibitions. Visitors could purchase the exhibited works immediately, and many of them did so. Other reasons for the association meaning a lot to its members include the fact that it gave them an opportunity to exhibit, that it served as a kind of hallmark of quality and that developments in the field of graphic art were made visible to a wide audience. If you were a visitor to a new exhibition of De Grafische, you knew you were ‘up to date’ again. In addition, the exhibitions offered participating artists the opportunity to see and discuss each other’s work

A mere 200 graphic artists were members of De Grafische in the 20th century. One of them was M.C. Escher. He became a member in 1931, and in that same year he took part in his first group exhibition.* He was to do so many more times. In 1947, he was elected to De Grafische’s board. He had no administrative experience, but as an archivist his main task was to keep a chest of archives and prints, which was no problem. At annual meetings, he would show the chest unchanged, and it would quickly be closed again **. For Escher, the importance of his position lay chiefly in the opportunity it gave him to exchange experiences with the other members. The fact that Escher was now highly regarded also made it interesting for the De Grafische to have him on its board.

In addition to the many group exhibitions in which Escher took part, he also exhibited several times in smaller groups. With two, three or more colleagues, and sometimes with just one. In late 1949, Escher exhibited for the first time when J.C. Ebbinge Wubben, Director of Museum Boijmans in Rotterdam (now Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen), who organised an exhibition encompassing work by three graphic artists: Harry van Kruiningen, Wout van Heusden and M.C. Escher.

The latter was very enthusiastic about this group exhibition, as he wrote to his friend Bas Kist***:

My work has never been so well-cared-for and displayed in such an ideal space. Graphic art is evidently close to Ebbinge Wubben’s heart; he spared no expense to make it as good as possible. Each of the three of us has a room to himself; the work may be very diverse (my room is located between the other two, and the work of v. Heusden, a sophisticated etcher, is [like that of v. Kruiningen] much ‘more modern’ than mine; almost completely abstract), but we don’t bite one another. On the contrary. I believe that the marked contrasts make the exhibition more palatable to the public.

So Escher enjoyed it. In 1950, he exhibited with Harry van Kruiningen on two occasions and in the years that followed he appeared several times in a four-man show, again with Van Kruiningen and Van Heusden, supplemented by J.M. Prange. For the exhibitions with these four graphic artists, Escher created a vignette in 1952 in which the names are linked horizontally and vertically, with a ‘4’ in the background as a shadow image. In 1956 Prange left the ‘group’ and was replaced by Harry Disberg. In this composition and under the name Vier Grafici (‘Four Graphic Artists’) the four exhibited several times between 1957 and 1959. The four also had their own logo, a white 4 on a black background. It is not entirely clear why Escher felt so at home in this group of four, although he did note that the contrasts between the four added value for both the artists and the public.

Dr F. Vercammen, who reviewed the group exhibition in the Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven) in the Nieuwsblad van het Zuiden in 1959, gave the following account:

It may seem strange that four seemingly so disparate figures as Disberg, Escher, Van Heusden and Van Kruiningen should form a close bond, which in recent years has seen them all emerge as a group, but in reality, it is not so strange. Three factors drove them together and keep them together. First, there is the unique craftsmanship, as well as a pure notion of the graphic arts as an independent art form. No longer in the service of something else, for example as illustration or means of reproduction, but force to be reckoned with in its own right, with as much claim to an independent existence as an oil painting. Add to this a great sensitivity and response to the spirit of the time. The works of the four of them are steeped in contemporary events. Disberg’s Portrait of an Atomic Scientist, Escher’s Relativity, Van Kruiningen’s Winkel van Poésjkin’s Doodkistmaker, Van Heusden’s De Schepen der Dichters gaan Verloren – these are all creations imbued with existential uncertainty, a threat of forces that mankind has called upon and that may one day dominate and destroy their creator, an evolution that threatens to lead to complete dissolution. Finally, there is a desire that arises out of the foregoing, as if by necessity, to escape from that world and, as though in a new Romanticism, to immerse oneself in a mysterious atmosphere, replete with surrealist elements.

It is interesting to read how the Dutch press reacted to these group exhibitions. The work of these graphic artists was quite different from each other, which led to preferences in the written press. Wout van Heusden, for example, is called the most fascinating artist in several newspaper articles, including one in a review in the Algemeen Dagblad of the 1959 exhibition at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. Simon van Adelberg says of Van Heusden:

The most fascinating of the four is the Rotterdam artist Wout van Heusden. His sheets depict a bizarre world, reminiscent of the atmosphere in Pollock’s paintings. Van Heusden’s work is also closely related to Tachisme and Abstract Expressionism. Even though his work is not straightforwardly classifiable as abstract. The atmosphere of his sheets is ominous, brimming with menace and despair. The figures—sometimes recognisable as a horseman, a ship, a standing man—seem to be in a chaos, an emptiness with the shadows of threatening monsters. His graphic art is highly suggestive, produced with a beautiful hand and a sensitive touch. The outward chaos is only an illusion. The chaotic and the random are bound by bold black lines.

Disberg and Van Kruiningen also draw Van Adelberg’s attention, but Escher comes off less well:

The work of M. C. Escher is very well known. His shrewd, intellectual constructions hit the spot on every viewing. However, I cannot help but get the impression that his graphics are becoming smoother, mannered. His sheets are all very sophisticated and clever, the prints are beautiful, yet ostensibly tend towards rigidity. The technique is learned and threatens to degenerate into a mannerism.

Responding to the same exhibition, Piet Begeer wrote of Escher in Het Vrije Volk:

Every sheet has a symbolic meaning. But it is a contrived symbolism, the symbolism of a highly focused mind, served up ingeniously without any discernible inner motivation. This work exudes the spirit of the shrewd man who leaves the peasants to the threshing, leaves the sufferings and the joys of mankind for what they may be, and single-mindedly relegates life to the status of an abstract spiritual game. The rare art of the Escher phenomenon is based on an avoidance of the fullness of life, and is therefore devoid of this desirable and necessary fullness of life.

This contrast between great popularity among the public and aversion among the written press often afflicted Escher in the last decades of his life. He was a victim of the idea that an artist who is so popular with the common man can never be a real artist.

But there were also great enthusiasts among the professionals, led by the man who organised the first group exhibition in 1949: J.C. Ebbinge Wubben. He became a great advocate of Escher, brought him back to Boijmans in 1952 and 1959 and also bought a number of prints for that museum. He wrote of the graphic artist ****:

My lingering impression of Escher is that of a singularly “noble”, extremely modest man; the fact that I found his prints so “beautiful” surprised him: I had and have the impression that he thought of himself as a “problem-solver”, like the Renaissance artists Uccello and Alberti, much more of a practitioner and researcher of mathematical and stereometric problems than an “artist”—solving the problem at hand took precedence over the design of the solution.

Source
[*] At the end of 1941, Escher resigned from De Grafische, because he wanted to avoid becoming involved, through a kind of collective membership, in the Kultuurkamer, an initiative that he abhorred. After the war, he rejoined De Grafische.
[**] Wim Hazeu, M.C. Escher, Een biografie, Meulenhoff, 1998, page 310
[***] Letter from Escher to Bas Kist, 16 October 1949
[****] Wim Hazeu, M.C. Escher, Een biografie, Meulenhoff, 1998, page 321

Exhibitions with multiple graphic arts friends

Graphical work by M.C. Escher, W. van Heusden and H. van Kruiningen
Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans, 15/10/1949 – 15/11/1949

M.C. Escher and Harry van Kruiningen
Amsterdam: Galerie Le Canard, 1950
Dordrecht: Teekengenootschap Pictura, 1950

Graphical work by M.C. Escher, Wout van Heusden, Harry van Kruiningen, J.M. Prange and guest artist W.J. Rozendaal
Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans, 27/09/1952 – 03/11/1952

Four graphic artists: M.C. Escher, Wout van Heusden, Harry van Kruiningen, J.M. Prange
Arnhem: Gemeentemuseum, 01/04/1953 – 03/05/1953
Zwolle: Hopmanshuis, 09/05/1953 – 17/05/1953
Den Haag: Gemeentemuseum, 12/02/1954 – 03/05/1953

Four graphic artists: M.C. Escher, Wout van Heusden, Harry van Kruiningen, Harry Disberg
Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 26/02/1957 – 02/02/1957
Leiden: Prentenkabinet, 31/05/1957 – 15/06/1957
Arnhem: Gemeentemuseum, 28/02/1958 – 13/04/1958
Rotterdam: Boijmans van Beuningen, 15/02/1959 – 15/03/1959
Eindhoven: Van Abbemuseum, 26/09/1959 – 31/10/1959

For a few years now, Escher in The Palace has been working on making the museum accessible to as many people as possible. Ways in which we have done so include making alterations within the museum to allow for independent museum visits, adjusting our guided tours, and increasing our website’s accessibility. For the past three years, the museum has been focusing on becoming more accessible to people with a visual impairment.

To do so, Escher in The Palace has joined forces with The Hague University of Applied Sciences, high school ISW Hoogeland, foundation Koninklijke Visio, foundation Kubes and foundation Voorall. This collaboration has resulted in two important developments. First, a guided tour for blind and visually impaired people, in which Escher’s themes are explained by means of specially developed touch objects. Additionally, three interactive multisensory objects have been designed: 3D versions of the prints Reptiles, Depth and Relativity, which stimulate visitors through audio and by letting them feel the objects. The focus in this is on independent museum visits and sparking conversation between those who see and those who don’t.

Both projects entailed an intensive collaboration between students, the museum, the target group and the producer. This is why the learning and developing process for all involved parties was at least as valuable as the end result. A process that in the long term contributes just as much to an inclusive world as the multisensory objects themselves. And this hasn’t gone unnoticed. Escher in The Palace received the jury prize of the RAAK Stimuleringsprijs 2020 for this project.

The multisensory objects have now been added to the interactive exhibition on the second floor of the museum. This film tells the story of how the project came about. Because we want the film to be accessible as well, subtitles and audio description have been added. A text alternative for the recorded audio is also available. This accessible version was made using Scribit.pro’s software

Escher in The Palace recently acquired the sculpture Antigravity (2019) by Canadian sculptor and architect David Umemoto through a special acquisition fund. The sculpture is currently on view in room 9 at the museum, between M.C. Escher’s prints.

The art of David Umemoto (Hamilton, Canada, 1975) balances on the border between sculpture and architecture. Umemoto originally is an architect, but has increasingly been focusing on sculpture. In his sleek concrete statues of buildings, he explores the twilight zone of both disciplines: staircases lead nowhere and walls stop at the wrong places.

In 2019, Escher in The Palace organised the exhibition David Umemoto: Architect of the Impossible. Following this exhibition, and inspired by Escher’s print Relativity (1953), Umemoto created this sculpture. In both works of art, gravity does not seem to exist. Both below and above, and left and right are stairs that can only be tread in the absence of gravity.

David Umemoto is represented by Modern Shapes Gallery in Antwerp.

The final print in Graphic Grandeur: Escher and his Contemporaries is an ode not to Escher, but to the first royal resident of this palace: Queen Emma, the Queen Mother. In this 1897 lithograph by Jan Toorop (1858-1928) we see Queen Emma and her daughter Wilhelmina on a visit to Gouda. The print features all kinds of objects associated with industry in Gouda at the time, such as pipes and candles. The litho is made in Toorop’s distinctive Art Nouveau style, recognisable by its strong contours with graceful lines and exuberant decorative elements. This style was also popularly called the Salad Oil Style, in response to the iconic decorative poster that Toorop made for the Nederlandsche Oliefabriek (Dutch Oil Factory) in Delft.

A visit like the one Toorop depicted, was made more often to find a connection with the people. In this way an attempt was made to make the royal family and the young future Queen Wilhelmina more popular. When King Willem III died in 1890, he left behind his wife Emma and ten-year-old daughter Wilhelmina. Emma became Queen Regent and ruled the country until her daughter reached adulthood. Then, Wilhelmina would become Queen of the Netherlands. From an early age she was prepared heavily for her upcoming royal role. Her mother was strict in her upbringing, but she did this out of good will to bring about royal dignity and knowledge and skills to Wilhelmina.

Due to the illness of King Willem III, no visits were made to cities and provinces throughout the country for a while, but as Queen Regent, Emma started them again. It became an important part of Wilhelmina’s upbringing. Emma did this for several reasons. First of all, it was a good way for Princess Wilhelmina to get to know the country. In this way she was able to build up a personal bond with the provinces and make the past and present of the locations her own. Emma also considered it important to increase the visibility of the Royal Family. Under King William III this had been less of a priority, but with the arrival of a new young queen, Emma wanted to create a better bond between monarch and people. Emma was successful in this and with these visits, among other things, laid a good foundation for a more accessible and more open Royal Family.