Who was Mesdag?

Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1831-1915) was a leading artist of The Hague School. He started out as a businessman but devoted himself entirely to painting at the age of 35, specialising in marine painting. His famous Panorama van Scheveningen is still there in Zeestraat, near The Mesdag Collection. His wife, Sientje Mesdag-van Houten, was also a painter, mainly of landscapes and still lifes.

The Mesdags were active in public life and performed key roles in The Hague art world. Mesdag chaired the Pulchri Studio artists’ association, for instance, and organised large-scale group exhibitions in particular, also in other countries. Sientje was also active in Pulchri Studio and presided over Onze Club (Our Club), an association of female artists.

Not only did Mesdag soon become the greatest artist of his age in the Netherlands, he was an imposing specimen physically as well: Vincent van Gogh described him as a ‘veritable mastodon’.

Museum and residence
Mesdag was not only an artist, he was also a great art collector. Starting in 1866 he and Sientje assembled a first-rate collection of paintings, drawings, ceramics and Japanese art. Within a few years it had taken on such proportions that in 1887 Mesdag had a museum built onto his house. It opened on Sunday mornings, and Mesdag showed visitors around himself. On these occasions, he would first present his and Sientje’s studios in the house, the latter described by a lady friend as ‘an art museum in its own right’. Today the museum has a vast collection of paintings and objets d’art on display. The Mesdags’ former home is a venue for temporary exhibitions, and you can hire the rooms for receptions.

Van Gogh Museum
In 1903 Mesdag donated his museum to the Dutch state, and since 1990 The Mesdag Collection has been part of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
The French and Dutch artists that Mesdag admired and collected were an important source of inspiration for Vincent van Gogh, who even took lessons from Mauve. In 1881 Van Gogh saw part of Mesdag’s collection of French art at an exhibition, writing eulogistically in one of his letters: ‘There is a lot of fine work there by Dupré, Corot, Daubigny, Diaz, Courbet, Breton, Jacque &c. (…) I’m glad I managed to see it all.’
The collections of The Mesdag Collection and the Van Gogh Museum complement each other nicely, providing a good overview of late 19th-century art.