Mauve, who died in 1887, was best known for his pastoral scenes. His pictures of sheep on the moors and fens recall pleasant memories of summer days and sunny hours.
Josef Israels went largely to the life of fishermen for his motives, though one of his best-known works is that noble one, 'David before Saul.'
Bosboom one naturally associates with church interiors, wonderfully well done; Blommers, Artz, and Bles likewise paint interiors, the first two choosing their subjects by preference from the houses of the working classes, while Bles confines himself to the dwellings of the wealthy.
Bisschop is unquestionably the best of the Dutch portrait-painters, though his still life is considered even more artistic than his portraits. The foremost of the lady portrait and figure painters is Therese Schwartze, who, like Josselin de Jong, often takes Queen Wilhelmina as a grateful subject for her brush.
The foregoing may be regarded as painters of the old school, though every one has so much originality as to be virtually the initiator of a distinct direction. The newer schools are represented by men like J. Toorop, Voerman, Verster, Camerlingh Onnes, Bauer, and Hoytema.
Toorop is the well-known symbolist. His style is Oriental rather than Dutch, and his topics for the most part are mystical in character. He is famous also for his decorative art. This many-sided man is probably the greatest artist soul in Holland. He is expert in almost every domain of art. Etching, pastel and water-colour drawing, oil-painting, wood-cutting, lithography, working in silver, copper, and brass, and modelling in clay, belong equally to his accomplishments, though as a painter he is, of course, best known.
Voerman, once known for his minutely painted flowers, is now a pronounced landscape painter. His cloud studies are marvellous, though perhaps the landscape colours are somewhat hard and overdone in the effort to produce the desired effects. He paints, as a rule, the rolling cumulus, and is one of the first of the younger artists.
Verster is known best for his impressionist way of painting flowers in colour patches, though he has now taken to the minute and mystical method of representing them.
Onnes, like Toorop, is a decided mystic, and there is a vein of mysticism in all his paintings. He is famous for his light effects in glass and pottery, and has especially a wonderful knack of painting choirs in churches ail in a dreamy light.
Bauer is better known, perhaps, by his drawings and etchings than by his paintings. He paints with striking beauty old churches, temples, and mosques, generally the exteriors, and the effect of his minute work is wonderful. Bauer is also one of the finest of Dutch decorative artists.