Hendrick Willem Mesdag (1831-1915) is a Dutch landscape painter who can be related to the Hague School. His paintings, often seascapes, evoke the light of Turner and the realism of the Barbizon school.
Son of a banker, Hendrick Mesdag abandoned finance at the age of thirty-five to devote himself entirely to painting, which he studied from 1866 in Brussels with Alma Tadema. He will exhibit at the Paris Salon where he will obtain a gold medal, from 1870.
In 1881, Hendrick Mesdag painted his famous "Panorama" on behalf of the 'Société Anonyme du Panorama Maritime de la Haye'. Since 1875, "Panoramas" were in fashion and represented 360 degrees of landscapes that visitors could look over from a central stage.
With the help of colleagues from the school of The Hague - Sientje Mesdag-van Houten, Bernard Blommers, George Breitner and Théophile de Bock - Hendrick Mesdag realizes this composition with a circumference of 120 meters and a height of 14 meters .
On this huge canvas, he will create or have created scenes in incredible detail, like the one representing his wife, Sientje Mesdag Van Houten, herself a painter, in front of her easel on the beach.
Hendrick Mesdag and his wife are also major collectors. Over the years, they acquired many paintings by Gustave Courbet, Jean-François Millet, Camille Corot and Narcisse Diaz de la Peña. They will donate it to the State in 1903.
Zeestraat 65
2518 AA La Haye
In his art history lectures, Fabrice Roy combines the past with the present, in a poetic and playful evocation of the French 19th century...
