24 September 2020
From Saturday, 26 September, The Mesdag Collection will highlight the importance of Sientje Mesdag-van Houten to Dutch female artists at the end of the 19th century.
Nine powerful works from the museum’s own collection that have not often been displayed show how Mesdag-van Houten and her husband, marine painter Hendrik Willem Mesdag, were ahead of their time by collecting works by artists like Thérèse Schwartze and Suze Robertson.
The presentation will be on display until 14 February 2021 at The Mesdag Collection in The Hague.
Sientje Mesdag-van Houten (1834-1909) was an influential woman within the art world of The Hague, and played an important role in supporting female artists. The wife of marine painter Hendrik Willem Mesdag, Sientje Mesdag-van Houten was an artist herself, taught several women artists, and was on the board of various societies for the promotion of the position of female artists. She and her husband built a large collection of artworks, which they housed at Museum Mesdag (now The Mesdag Collection) in The Hague. The collection includes a relatively large number of works by female artists, many of whom were acquaintances of the Mesdags.
From Saturday, nine of the more than forty artworks in the Mesdags’ collection will be on display in The Network of Sientje Mesdag-van Houten, a unique presentation, as several of these works are too delicate to be on permanent display.
The central theme of the exhibition is Sientje Mesdag-van Houten’s network, with artworks by her friends and relatives, including Thérèse Schwartze, Suze Robertson, Gerardina van de Sande Bakhuyzen, and Laura Alma Tadema-Epps. Of course, the presentation also includes work by Sientje Mesdag-van Houten herself. The selection consists of a wide variety of art works, including paintings and drawings, from portraits to still lifes.
This small presentation has received financial support from the Rembrandt Association and the Turing Foundation, which, due to the corona crisis, have made funds available to museums to highlight their own collections.
