Paul Joseph Constantin Gabriël Dutch, 1828-1903

Gabriël came from an artistic family for his father was the sculptor Paul Joseph Gabriël. He was born in Amsterdam in 1828. After his education at the drawing academy in Amsterdam, he left for Cleves to be apprenticed to the landscapist B. C. Koekkoek. Gabriël later said in a conversation with Louis de Haes: “I was apprenticed to Koekkoek and it was some sort of college where painters were made ready. – Oh well, I was sent there because I had to do something. (…) However, I did not stay very long in Cleves; they soon realised that it was not the right place for me and I gathered my junk (it was not much), and told Mr Koekkoek goodbye, you know?” The farewell from Koekkoek also meant a farewell to the Romantic notions about the landscape.

Gabriël chose the direction of the young realists who met up in Oosterbeek, nicknamed the Nederlandse Barbizon, during the 1850’s. Here, he met among others Anton Mauve, whom he knew from Haarlem, and father and son Bilders. His wayward style of painting was not appreciated by art lovers. Gabriël had no other option than to move to Brussels where he contacted Willem Roelofs. During his stay in Brussels, he returned to The Netherlands quite regularly to paint in Veenendaal, Abcoude and in the surroundings of Kampen and Kortenhoef. In Kampen as well as in Brussels he collaborated with W. B. Tholen, his most important student. In 1884, Gabriël returned to The Hague. He settled at the Kanaalweg no. 113 in Scheveningen. He died in Scheveningen in August 1903.

Gabriël once said about his own work: “It appears to me that the requirements of an artist are a great deal of bravura together with a feeling of pride and a fair amount of indifference for the perception and actions of others...”

Indeed, the views of the Dutch landscapes by Gabriël do deviate from the prevailing atmospheric depiction that suited with the Hague School. Like Willem Roelofs, he had spent so much time in Brussels, people thought him to have the Belgian nationality. In 1884, however, he returned to The Netherlands and was completely and wholly accepted into the ambience of the Hague School.

His cheerful and sunny use of colours also manifests itself in this polder landscape. There is a certain likeness to the polder landscapes of Roelofs, but Gabriël’s vision, however, is more spatial and vaster and is also less graphic. His stay in Brussels will certainly have brought him in contact with artists as Isidore Meyers and Adrien Joseph Heymans who gave landscape painting in Belgium a new impulse.