arts, history

Saving a Dutch Hotel That Was Once an Artists’ Colony

‘The view from our room was just a wall and a bit of sky,’ a reviewer wrote on Tripadvisor. ‘Avoid,’ they concluded. The Hotel Spaander in Volendam is struggling to survive. It closed down during the COVID pandemic. Then reopened while it was still being renovated. ‘Stay away,’ was the message. Yet it is one of the most historic hotels in the Netherlands.

In his recent book The Discovery of Holland, the Dutch writer Jan Brokken uncovers its extraordinary history. The fishing village of Volendam began to attract European and American artists after the English artist George Clausen painted a popular work titled High Mass at a Fishing Village on the Zuyder Zee. Hundreds of artists took the boat from Marken to reach the isolated fishing village on the edge of the Zuider Zee. They came to paint the light and the local fishermen in their traditional costumes.

Leendert Spaander and his wife Aaltje spotted a business opportunity. Inspired by the artists’ colonies at Barbizon, Skagen, and Pont-Aven, they opened an artists’ hotel with studios to rent. The hotel attracted more than 1,400 artists from all over Europe and the United States. The guest book is filled with famous names, including Whistler, Signac, Renoir, and Pissarro. The writer Marcel Proust also stayed here, noting that Spaander’s daughter was délicieuse.

The hotel gradually acquired paintings left by its guests. Some were gifts. Others probably helped to cover the bills. The walls of the hotel restaurant are now covered with these paintings from Volendam’s heyday as an artists’ colony.

Maybe the hotel can be saved. It has been rebranded as an art hotel. Guests can now pick up pencil and paper at reception and sit sketching on the waterfront. ‘The history of the hotel is cool and the art on the wall is amazing,’ a recent guest wrote on Tripadvisor. ‘We will be back.’

• Hotel Spaander
• Volendam