HAARLEM.- This summer De Hallen Haarlem is staging a major exhibition about the sea in Dutch art from 1850 to the present. An overview of different approaches to and interpretations of the subject, it features works by such artists as Hendrik Mesdag, Bernard Blommers and Isaac Israels as well as early Modernists like Jan Sluijters and Jan Toorop, and more recent artists like Edgar Fernhout, Co Westerik, Jan Dibbets and Rineke Dijkstra. To the Sea runs from 15 June to 2 September 2012.

The sea and the Netherlands are inextricably linked, and it is a frequent presence in Dutch art. Storms at sea, naval battles and coastal scenes - artists have worked with these themes since the seventeenth century. In the nineteenth century, driven by a desire for personal expression, artists began increasingly to experiment with different styles and techniques, and the sea became a subject in its own right for the first time. The following century saw a proliferation of new works inspired by the sea, in which we see both a search for the abstract and the emergence of new forms of realism.

Waves on Paper and in Film
The special exhibition in De Hallen Haarlem reflects every aspect of the sea - its eternal beauty and moving vastness, its overwhelming and threatening nature. Alongside paintings and works on paper, there are three-dimensional works, photographs and films. The works on show come from numerous museums and other public collections, galleries and private collections. The exhibition is divided into five chronologically-linked sections: Impression, Expression, Abstraction, Modern Realism and the Conceptual approach.

Summer Exhibition
To the Sea is the sixth exhibition in the De Hallen Haarlem Summer Series, and as usual will be accompanied by a lavishly illustrated catalogue. The exhibition is a sequel to A Portrait of Holland - The Dutch Landscape in Art since 1850 (De Hallen Haarlem 2011).

Seascapes in the Frans Hals Museum
Haarlem-born Hendrick Vroom (1562/63-1640) is regarded as the pioneer of the marine genre in the Netherlands. From 11 May to 2 September the Frans Hals Museum will be showing paintings by Vroom and his contemporaries in a small exhibition of seventeenth-century seascapes.