When the Mesdags decorated their house, they proudly had the names of a number of French artists painted onto the walls: Daubigny, Millet, Dupré, Rousseau, Courbet, Corot, Troyon and Diaz. These painters all featured in their collection. Who were they? And what made them so special?
Camille Corot painting outdoors at his easel
Painting outdoors
The Barbizon artists started a revolution in painting, both in France and beyond. Instead of idealised landscapes, they painted personal impressions of nature and outdoor life that were quick and unpolished. What was also new was that they painted outside, in the open air.
Camille Corot, Abandoned Quarry, 1850
Barbizon
Barbizon is a village about 50 kilometres south of Paris. It is close to the forest of Fontainebleau, with its ancient trees and massive rock formations. From 1830, Camille Corot made regular visits to Barbizon, where he painted this abandoned quarry.
Hero of The Hague School
While most artists visited Barbizon only occasionally, Jean-François Millet lived there permanently. His paintings of poor peasants were so powerful that they made a lasting impression. It made Millet a source of inspiration for many of the painters of the Hague School.
Jean-François Millet, Haystacks, 1868
Théodore Rousseau, Massacre of the Innocents, 1847
A love of trees
Théodore Rousseau had a profound love of trees. When he witnessed a group of trees being felled, he regarded it as murder. In desperation, he drew a sketch which he later used to make this painting in his studio. He never finished it, but that was exactly what charmed the Mesdags when they bought it.
Paint from a tube
The invention of the paint tube in around 1840 made it easier for painters to work outdoors. Portable field easels and handy painters' chests also became available. Their lid could hold a panel or a piece of cardboard, serving as an easel.
Dutch painters in Barbizon
For many 19th-century Dutch landscape painters, the name Barbizon had a magical ring to it. Most only knew the art of the French outdoor painters who worked there from exhibitions or stories. A few Dutch painters, however, such as Willem Roelofs, Jozef Israëls, Jacob Maris and Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch, travelled to Barbizon themselves.
Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch, The house of Jean-François Millet in Barbizon, 1900, private collection
Theo van Gogh's address book (1857-1891), after 1878, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
The Mesdags and the Barbizon painters
Most of us have dreamt of coming into a large sum of money, and for the Mesdags, that is exactly what happened. Sientje and Hendrik Willem both inherited impressive sums from their parents, in 1864 and 1881 respectively. Thanks to this second inheritance, the Mesdags were able to buy expensive paintings by Barbizon painters and other French masters.
Good customers
Between 1880 and 1890, the Mesdags were among the best customers of the art dealer Goupil, which had branches in Paris and The Hague. Theo van Gogh, Vincent’s brother, worked at Goupil’s Paris branch. He listed the Mesdags in this address book full of his business contacts.
Astronomical amount
In 1882, the year after the second inheritance, the Mesdags spent 114,902 guilders on art. This was an astronomical sum at the time. Of the approximately 350 paintings and drawings in their collection, almost half were by French artists. Their most expensive purchase was Jules Dupré’s painting Autumn, for which they paid 12,400 guilders.
Camille Corot, A Path in Saint-Cloud, 1862
Jules Dupré, Autumn, 1865
Learning from Millet
Following the death of French painter Jules Bastien-Lepage, the contents of his studio went to auction. There Hendrik Willem and Sientje bought this oil sketch, for which Bastien-Lepage’s niece and grandfather had served as models. The sketch had been inspired by Jean-François Millet’s Vineyard Labourer Resting. Later, the Mesdags also bought that pastel drawing.
Jules Bastien-Lepage, Sketch for Haymaking, 1876
Jean-François Millet, Vineyard Labourer Resting, 1869
Gustave Courbet
In addition to art by the Barbizon painters, the Mesdags bought works by other big names such as Gustave Courbet. Opinions differ as to whether this is a self-portrait by Courbet or the portrait of a friend named Hippolyte. On the right, above the subject’s shoulder, Courbet wrote in French:
‘To my friend Hippolyte, in memory of our friendship.’
‘A few months ago, after a tour of the galleries, a number of French artists who had visited the Mesdag Museum declared, “We have just become acquainted with Daubigny, Corot, Millet, Troyon for the first time! Masterpieces like these are not hanging in the Louvre!”’
Wereldkroniek magazine, 17 January 1903
Exhibition of French art
In 1882, the Goupil art gallery organised an exhibition of French paintings from private collections at The Hague Academy of Art. Fifteen of these works, all by Barbizon School artists, were from the Mesdag collection. The Mesdags had acquired most of these paintings fairly recently thanks to their large inheritance.
The Hague Academy of Art in Prinsessegracht
Van Gogh came to take a look
Vincent van Gogh was living in The Hague at the time of this exhibition. After visiting it, he wrote to his brother Theo:
‘I particularly liked the large sketch by T. Rousseau from the Mesdag collection’.
The Mesdags owned two versions of this study: the one you see here and a larger sketch. It was the larger sketch that hung in the exhibition.
Théodore Rousseau, The Descent of the Cattle in the Haut-Jura Mountains (sketch), 1835
Top: Jules Dupré, Evening, c. 1875-1880. Bottom: Vincent van Gogh, Landscape with a Stack of Peat and Farmhouses, 1883, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Just like Dupré
Vincent van Gogh still had a vivid impression of this painting by Jules Dupré in his mind a year after seeing it in The Hague. He had been particularly fascinated by the painting’s atmosphere, and was reminded of it when he saw farmhouses in Drenthe (a region in the east of the Netherlands) under a colourful sky. He painted the farmhouses just like Dupré.
‘I recently saw the exhibition of French art from the collections of Mesdag, Post, etc. There are many beautiful things there by Dupré, Corot, Daubigny, Diaz, Courbet, Breton, Jacque, etc.’
Vincent van Gogh in a letter to his brother Theo, 15-16 July 1882
Favourite artist: Daubigny
The Mesdag Collection contains no fewer than 25 artworks by Charles-François Daubigny. He was the Mesdags’ favourite artist. They owned monumental works by him, but also the intimate oil sketch Moonlight. This was the first Daubigny that they acquired, purchased shortly after the artist’s death.
Hendrik Willem Mesdag studied Daubigny’s Moonlight carefully for his oil sketch of the harbour at Vlissingen. He tried to render the sky above the harbour with the same kind of brushwork and similar colours. Sientje Mesdag-van Houten and her niece Barbara van Houten also studied Daubigny’s works to learn from them.
Charles-François Daubigny, Moonlight, 1875
Hendrik Willem Mesdag, Harbour at Vlissingen, 1887
‘My house is open to all journalists, yes. It’s particularly interesting for foreigners, especially the French, who can see here that we also have beautiful things. I’m sure they’ve never seen the like’.
Interview with Mesdag in the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant newspaper, 13 September 1893
