Hendrik Willem Mesdag
Dutch (1831-1915)
Marine painter Hendrik Willem Mesdag was born in Groningen in 1831. The son of a banker, he worked at his father’s stock brokerage firm until 1866, when his wife Sientje’s inheritance afforded the family the financial means to retire from banking. Though he had drawn and painted in his free time, Mesdag formally began his artistic career at the age of 35, with an apprenticeship to Willem Roelofs in Brussels. Lawrence Alma-Tadema, a second cousin and established painter, served as an informal advisor. Roelofs encouraged Mesdag to distinguish himself from other landscapists, and Mesdag lit upon marine painting after a trip to the island of Norderney. He moved to The Hague in 1868 to be closer to the sea. In 1870, Mesdag exhibited at the Paris Salon for the first time and won a surprise gold. The win launched him out of relative obscurity and established his reputation as a master of coastal atmosphere.
Mesdag joined The Hague art society Pulchri Studio in the following years and was elected chairman in 1889. He exhibited continuously at the Salon until 1877, showed multiple works at the 1878 Exposition Universelle, and resumed his participation in the Salon in 1881, 1883, 1885 and 1887. He won another gold at the 1889 Exposition Universelle, and was awarded the Legion of Honor the same year.
In addition to his artistic output, Mesdag played an outsize role in promoting the art of his fellow Hague School painters. He championed a generation that included the masters Anton Mauve and Jacob Maris, and inspired younger artists to emulate their style. Mesdag, Mauve and Maris were critical in the 1876 founding of the Dutch Drawing Society, a group for the advancement of watercolor. The Mesdags amassed a personal art collection that included works by Barbizon painters Corot, Daubigny, and Millet, as well as paintings by their Dutch contemporaries, and ceramics, bronzes, and statuary from Asia. Their collection is now a public museum housed next door to their old residence in The Hague.
Mesdag paintings reside in numerous public collections, including the Louvre Museum, the Musée d’Orsay, the Rijksmuseum, the National Gallery of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum.
