In the Month of July
Paul Joseph Constantin Gabriël
PAUL JOSEPH CONSTANTIN GABRIËL, 1889. OIL ON CANVAS.
Gabriël’s paintings were acts of patriotism, intended not only to celebrate the beauty of his homeland but to make other’s see it in the glory that he did. An influential member of the Hague School, a group of artists working in The Hague and painting realist scenes rich in atmosphere and mood, he was an outlier within the group. So fond of muted tones and a limited, sombre palette, the Hague School is still today sometimes referred to as the ‘Gray School’. Yet Gabriël saw colour everywhere, and the Dutch country side swelled before him, ‘colorful, juice, [and] fat’. ‘Our country is saturated with color’, he wrote in a letter, ‘I repeat, our country is not gray, not even in grayweather’. In direct opposition to his contemporaries, he saw in front of him a bounty of shades, vivid and moving in their density and variety and hoped that all those who looked closely would see this beauty too.