Hendrik Willem Mesdag (23 February 1831 – 10 July 1915) was a Dutch

marine painter Marine art or maritime art is a form of figurative art (that is, painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture) that portrays or draws its main inspiration from the sea. Maritime painting is a genre that depicts ships and the sea—a genre part ...

Biography

He was born in

Groningen Groningen (; gos, Grunn or ) is the capital city and main municipality of Groningen province in the Netherlands. The ''capital of the north'', Groningen is the largest place as well as the economic and cultural centre of the northern part of t ...

, the son of the banker Klaas Mesdag and his wife Johanna Wilhelmina van Giffen. Mesdag was encouraged by his father, an amateur painter, to study art. He married Sina van Houten in 1856, and when they inherited a fortune from her father, Mesdag retired from banking at the age of 35 to pursue a career as a painter. He studied in

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

with

Willem Roelofs Willem Roelofs (10 March 1822 – 12 May 1897) was a Dutch painter, water-colourist, etcher, lithographer and draughtsman. Roelofs was one of the forerunners of the Dutch Revival art, after the Romantic Classicism of the beginning of the 19th cent ...

and in 1868 moved to

The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...

to paint the sea. In 1870 he exhibited at the

Paris Salon The Salon (french: Salon), or rarely Paris Salon (French: ''Salon de Paris'' ), beginning in 1667 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Between 1748 and 1890 it was arguably the greatest annual or biennial art ...

and won the gold medal for ''The Breakers of the North Sea''. In 1880 he received a commission from a Belgian company to paint a

panorama A panorama (formed from Greek πᾶν "all" + ὅραμα "view") is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography, film, seismic images, or 3D modeling. The word was originally coined in ...

giving a view over the village of

Scheveningen Scheveningen is one of the eight districts of The Hague, Netherlands, as well as a subdistrict (''wijk'') of that city. Scheveningen is a modern seaside resort with a long, sandy beach, an esplanade, a pier, and a lighthouse. The beach is po ...

on the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian S ...

coast near The Hague. With the help of Sina and students he completed the enormous painting, '' Panorama Mesdag,''— 14 m high and 120 m around — by 1881. However, the vogue for panoramas was coming to an end, and when the company operating it went bust in 1886, Mesdag purchased the painting at auction and thereafter funding its operating losses from his own pocket. He joined the art society of The Hague (the ''Pulchri Studio'') and in 1889 was elected chairman. In 1903 he gave his house at

Laan van Meerdervoort The Laan van Meerdervoort () is an avenue in The Hague. At a length of 5.8 km, it is (as of 2011) the longest avenue in the Netherlands.The Mesdag Collection.

Honours

* 1903: Knight Grand Cross in the

Order of Orange-Nassau The Order of Orange-Nassau ( nl, Orde van Oranje-Nassau, links=no) is a civil and military Dutch order of chivalry founded on 4 April 1892 by the queen regent, Emma of the Netherlands. The order is a chivalric order open to "everyone who has ...

.Handelsblad (Het) 28-05-1903.

References

External links

Mesdag Documentation SocietyThe Mesdag Collection

Biographical notes on Hendrik Willem Mesdag, in Dutch RKD-Archive, The Hague

Digitized works in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
* 1831 births 1915 deaths 19th-century Dutch painters Dutch male painters Dutch landscape painters Hague School Dutch marine artists Painters from Groningen 20th-century Dutch painters Dutch Mennonites 19th-century Dutch male artists 20th-century Dutch male artists Mennonite artists {{Netherlands-painter-stub