Singer Laran

About

Painter William Henry Singer Jr. (1868–1943) and his wife, sculptor Anna (1878–1962), settled in the village of Laren in 1901. Through the Singer Memorial Foundation Anna founded in 1954, a museum opened here in 1956 — designed by architect Wouter Hamdorff as an expansion of the couple's home, 'De Wilde Zwanen', with a concert hall attached, and later given a major reconstruction led by architect Sanne Oomen's firm, completed in 2017. Walking through the galleries, paintings of the Dutch Gooische School and the French Barbizon School trace a line toward expressionism and cubism, with works by Bart van der Leck, Jan Toorop, and Leo Gestel on the walls. Step outside and a sculpture garden slows the pace — and it was here, in March 2020, that Van Gogh's The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen was stolen, only to be recovered in September 2023, a chapter now folded into the museum's own history.