Scheveningen girl

Bernard Blommers was a Hague School painter who specialized in genre scenes of the Dutch fishing community — his Scheveningen subjects depicting the fishermen, fishwives, and children of the North Sea fishing village on the edge of The Hague. His 'Scheveningen Girl' (1886) is a characteristic subject from his sustained engagement with the Scheveningen fishing community, the young girl from the fishing village depicted with the combination of regional costume accuracy and individual observation that distinguished his best genre work.

Blommers renders the Scheveningen girl with the warm, naturalistic observation of the Hague School's figure-genre tradition — the girl's specific face and the regional costume (the distinctive Scheveningen dress, including the characteristic cap and collar) depicted with both individual attention and cultural documentation. His handling of the girl's figure in the typical Hague School warm tonality and diffused light gives the portrait-genre work its characteristic warmth.