''Panorama Mesdag'' is 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 ...
by
Hendrik Willem Mesdag
Hendrik Willem Mesdag (23 February 1831 – 10 July 1915) was a Dutch marine painter.
Biography
He was born in Groningen, the son of the banker Klaas Mesdag and his wife Johanna Wilhelmina van Giffen. Mesdag was encouraged by his father ...
. Housed in a purpose-built museum in
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 ...
, the panorama is a cylindrical painting (also known as a
Cyclorama
A cyclorama is a panoramic image on the inside of a cylindrical platform, designed to give viewers standing in the middle of the cylinder a 360° view, and also a building designed to show a panoramic image. The intended effect is to make vie ...
) more than 14 metres high and about 40 metres in diameter (120 metres in circumference). From an observation gallery in the centre of the room the cylindrical perspective creates the illusion that the viewer is on a high sand dune overlooking the sea, beaches and village of Scheveningen in the late 19th century. A foreground of fake terrain around the viewing gallery hides the base of the painting and makes the illusion more convincing.
History
Mesdag was a marine painter of the
Hague School
The Hague School is a group of artists who lived and worked in The Hague between 1860 and 1890. Their work was heavily influenced by the Realism (visual arts), realist painters of the French Barbizon school. The painters of the Hague school genera ...
; in 1880 he was engaged by a Belgian company to paint the panorama, which with the assistance of his wife
Sientje Mesdag-van Houten and some student painters (including
George Hendrik Breitner
George Hendrik Breitner (12 September 1857 – 5 June 1923) was a Dutch painter and photographer. An important figure in Amsterdam Impressionism, he is noted especially for his paintings of street scenes and harbours in a realistic style. He pa ...
), was completed by 1881. However, the vogue for panoramas was coming to an end, and the company went bankrupt in 1886. Mesdag purchased the panorama and met its losses from his own pocket. The panorama is now the oldest surviving panorama in its original location.
Gallery
See also
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Panoramic painting
Panoramic paintings are massive artworks that reveal a wide, all-encompassing view of a particular subject, often a landscape, military battle, or historical event. They became especially popular in the 19th century in Europe and the United St ...
*
International Panorama Council The International Panorama Council (IPC) is a nongovernmental, not-for-profit organization, subject to Swiss law. It is a global network involving museum directors, managers, artists, restorers and historians who deal with the historical or the cont ...
*
Cyclorama
A cyclorama is a panoramic image on the inside of a cylindrical platform, designed to give viewers standing in the middle of the cylinder a 360° view, and also a building designed to show a panoramic image. The intended effect is to make vie ...
*
Museum Mesdag
The Mesdag Collection is an art museum in The Hague, Netherlands. It is managed by the Van Gogh Museum.
The museum is housed next to the former house of the Dutch painter Hendrik Willem Mesdag and shows the art Mesdag and his wife Sina van Ho ...
*''
Trompe-l'œil
''Trompe-l'œil'' ( , ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface. ''Trompe l'oeil'', which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into ...
''
External links
''Panorama Mesdag'' website
1881 paintings
Museums in The Hague
Mesdag
Maritime paintings
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