Making a career switch when you are older is always a gamble. This, however, did not stop Hendrik Willem Mesdag and Sientje Mesdag-van Houten from becoming artists when they were in their thirties. How did they go about this, and how did they become famous so quickly?
Hendrik Willem and Sientje married on 23 April 1856. This is their engagement photo (collection Panorama Mesdag)
Art lovers from an early age
Hendrik Willem and Sientje both came from wealthy families. Sientje’s father traded in beams and ship’s masts, while Hendrik Willem’s father was a banker. Both families collected art, and so their love of art was instilled at an early age. Sientje’s nephew Gerrit and nieces Barbara and Alida van Houten went on to become artists, just like Hendrik Willem’s brother, Taco.
‘I would never have become a painter without my husband, and he would probably not have become a painter without me.’
Sientje Mesdag-van Houten in an interview published in Wereldkroniek, 21 April 1906
The young Hendrik Willem Mesdag (centre back) during his time in Groningen, 1860. (photo: Image bank Groningen)
From businessman to artist
Hendrik Willem worked as a banker in his father’s stock brokerage firm in Groningen until he was 35. He could only paint and draw in his free time. When he received a large inheritance, Sientje encouraged him to fulfil his long-cherished desire to become an artist. This was quite a change from Hendrik Willem’s life as a banker.
‘I am thirty-five years of age. I have a wife and child. I was educated for commerce, but I am not suited to it. I am a painter. Help me’.
Hendrik Willem Mesdag in 1866 in a letter to his second cousin, the painter Lourens Alma Tadema.
Off to Brussels
Hendrik Willem Mesdag received a great deal of support from the Frisian painter Lourens Alma Tadema, who was his second cousin. In 1866, Hendrik Willem and Sientje followed him to Brussels, for a few years. Brussels was an international cultural breeding ground at that time. Tadema advised Mesdag to observe carefully and work with an eye for detail.
While in Brussels, the Mesdags met Willem Roelofs. Roelofs was one of the first Dutch painters to work in the French village of Barbizon, where he became enthusiastic about paining in nature and started to use intense colours. His advice was:
‘make the studies outdoors with the greatest simplicity and, in a word, endeavour to imitate nature with feeling, without thinking about the work of other people’.
Willem Roelofs, Stormy Afternoon, Noorden, 1880
Willem Roelofs, At the Farm, Noorden, 1880
Willem Roelofs, Lakes near Kortenhoef, 1880
Sea painter
How do you distinguish yourself from all the other landscape painters when you are just starting out as an artist? The penny dropped for Hendrik Willem during a holiday on Norderney, an island in the German Wadden Sea: he would paint seascapes. Mesdag’s plan worked well, because two years later, he had his first major success with Breakers on the North Sea.
Success came in 1870 at the Paris Salon, the most important annual art event in Europe. To everyone’s surprise, Mesdag won a gold medal with Breakers on the North Sea. Winning this medal gave Mesdag’s career an enormous boost and strengthened his resolve to specialise in marine art. It also led to Mesdag’s work being perceived as more valuable in the Netherlands. He went on to become one of the country’s best paid artists.
Hendrik Willem Mesdag, Breakers on the North Sea, 1870
Mesdag’s medal from the Paris Salon, 1870
‘Roelofs said: go, paint the sea. If someone had told me then that I would become the world’s leading painter in this genre, I would have answered: My good fellow, you are insane. But now, now that I am, people say, yes, this is also how we see the sea’.
Mesdag in an interview in Nieuwe Rotterdam Courant, 15 March 1906
Klaasje
In 1871, Klaasje, the only child of Sientje and Hendrik Willem, died. He contracted diphtheria and died three days later, just eight years old. This loss led Sientje to decide that she would also become a painter. Hendrik Willem wrote to a friend:
‘It is fortunate for us that we love art and let’s hope that we will continue to dedicate our lives to painting’.
Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1831-1915), Woman and child in an interior, 1868 (Museum Panorama Mesdag, The Hague, photo: Bob Strik, Reprorek)
Klaasje's drawing
Drawing in the woods
Sientje took private lessons during the couple’s years in Brussels (1866-1869), but she had often observed Hendrik Willem and other painters at work before then. One such occasion was on a trip to Oosterbeek in Gelderland, where the Mesdags and other artists drew in the woods and learned from each other’s techniques.
Sientje’s painting cabin
Sientje had a studio at home in The Hague, where she painted still lifes. However, she also often worked outside in her own painter’s cabin. Her cabin was first located in the Scheveningse Bosjes (the Scheveningen Woods) and later in the dunes.
Sientje Mesdag-van Houten in her studio, year unknown
Sientje Mesdag-van Houten’s painting cabin in the dunes, year unknown (photo: The Hague City Archives)
Woods, dunes and beach
Hendrik Willem and Sientje often took nature as their subject. He mainly painted seascapes, while she focused on landscape and still life. They did not have to look far for inspiration, as the garden behind their house on Laan van Meerdervoort backed onto the woods and dunes. Beyond those, lay the beach at Scheveningen.
Hendrik Willem went to Scheveningen to work on the beach nearly every day. There he would draw and paint the fishermen and their boats, the rough waves and the dunes. In bad weather, he would work in Hotel Rauch, where he kept a room.
The Panorama
One of Hendrik Willem Mesdag’s most famous paintings is the life-sized Panorama of Scheveningen from 1881. He worked on it with Sientje and a few other painters. This enormous painting has its own museum in Zeestraat, in The Hague. You can view the study that Hendrik Willem made for the Panorama in The Mesdag Collection, the home and museum for the art collection of Hendrik Willem and Sientje.
Hendrik Willem Mesdag, Study for Panorama of Scheveningen, 1880
Sientje Mesdag-van Houten, Head of a Dog: Nero, 1875
A role model for feminism
Sientje Mesdag-van Houten was already in her late thirties when she started painting. Friend of the family and fellow artist Jozef Israëls later called her a ‘role model for feminism’. Her paintings were successful, and she was one of the few women artist members of Pulchri Studio, home of the Hague’s artists’ society. She was also a member of various exhibition committees and boards.
‘Her years of constant study of trees have taught her how to use line and colour to depict the character of each species with striking accuracy: the slender silver birch, the muscular red pine, the mighty oak.’
Anna Croiset van der Kop in Elsevier’s Geïllustreerd Maandschrift, 1891 or earlier
Sientje Mesdag-van Houten, In the Veluwe: the Heath of Bennekom, 1891
Exhibitions
Sientje exhibited her work in the Netherlands and abroad. Sometimes Hendrik Willem arranged this for her. For example, he sent her imposing painting On the Veluwe to exhibitions in Berlin, Venice and Rotterdam. Sientje asked 1,000 guilders for it. As a comparison, her colleague Suze Robertson earned 2,500 guilders a year as a teacher of drawing.
‘Popular: I know that my work is not popular, but I also know that it is appreciated by many’.
Sientje Mesdag-van Houten in De Amsterdammer, December 1904
