From the beginning of the nineteenth century foreign artists visited the Netherlands. They came to study the famous "Dutch Masters" such as Rembrandt, Van Ruisdael, Hals, Vermeer and Cuyp in the museums, and to work with the renowned "Dutch light". Polder landscapes, town views, the life of farmers and fishermen, preferably in traditional costume and against a backdrop of windmills and bulb fields, were immortalized on canvas and in sketchbooks.

Although the seventeenth-century Holland that the artists were looking for as their subject did not exist anymore, the consequences of the emerging industrialisation were still limited. Only in a few regions the landscape had been radically altered. In some parts of the country one could still effortlessly imagine oneself in the past century.

Most artists were European, but more and more Americans started to arrive as well. They were drawn by the descriptions by American and European travellers who had visited 'Rembrandt's country' before them. The French artist and writer Henri Havard, for instance, wrote a book entitled: La Hollande Pittoresque, voyage aux villes mortes du Zuiderzee. In this book he described his journey, the landscape and the inhabitants of the 'dead villages' along the Zuiderzee. It became a huge success, also in English translation. In the same period, the American William Elliot Griffis wrote The American in Holland: sentimental rambles in the eleven provinces of the Netherlands.

The praise of the Netherlands was not only sung in books. In America articles were published about the Dutch wonderland in various weeklies and monthlies. Often the readers of these magazines could buy cheap reproductions of the paintings and drawings described in their pages. Culture was no longer exclusively available to the elite, the middle classes now also had access to cultural products.

The enthusiasm of the American artists who visited the Netherlands, and of the buyers of their works in America, was great. Artists such as James Abbott McNeill Whistler, George Hitchcock, William Henry Howe, Joseph Raphael, Elisabeth Nourse and many others established themselves for a longer or shorter period of time in the 'picturesque environment' of their choice. Locations such as the fishing villages Volendam, Marken, Edam, Scheveningen or Egmond were seen as unique in the world. In and around the Veluwe region American artists descended; in Laren (province of North Holland) and Nunspeet, and in the province of Zeeland too they took to work.

Often they worked in 'seventeenth century Dutch style'. The inhabitants of towns and villages served as models or sources of inspiration. They were painted in detail and 'from life'. Some artist lived in one place for years, others returned every summer for renewed inspiration.

Wherever foreign artists settled, a tourism infrastructure would develop almost automatically. Local entrepreneurs capitalized on the needs of the artists and their guest for lodgings, food and drink. In some places, such as Volendam (Spaander) and Laren (Hamdorff), establishments were set up that are still offering hospitality today. They also profited from the tourists who appeared in the wake of the artists. These were people who wanted to see the colourful world depicted by the artists with their own eyes.