The Dutch painter: Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1831 - 1915)
The thumbnails above are details from the
painting below.
Mark the various shades of browns and yellows.
Hendrik Willem Mesdag was born on February 23, 1831 in Groningen. His father, a merchant and banker, was an amateur painter who saw to it that his two sons were also educated in the art of painting.
Upon leaving school, Mesdag was employed by his fathers company for some 16 years. During that period he was educated in the art of drawing, stimulated by his wife Sientje van Houten, whom he married in 1856. When her father died in 1864 and left a considerable inheritance, Mesdag could afford to retire from the firm and devote himself entirely to painting.
Mesdag moved to Brussels where he served an apprenticeship with Willem Roelofs the painter. In 1868 Mesdag and his brother Taco visited the German island of Norderney and got fascinated by the sea in such a way that a year later he decided to move to The Hague, where he could observe and paint the sea and the beach every day.
In 1870 he contributed two paintings for the Paris Salon and as a complete outsider he won the gold medal for his Les Brisants de la Mer du Nord (the Breakers of the North Sea). This marked his breakthrough and with his commercial spirit he succeeded in establishing himself at home and abroad. In 1880 his reputation as a marine painter brought him the assignment from a Belgian company to paint a Panorama. After the bankruptcy of the Belgian company in 1886 he bought his own panorama, which he considered to be one of his major works of art. Mesdag took the responsibility for the financially unattractive exploitation and until his death he covered the yearly deficits out of his own means. He undertook considerable reconstruction projects and realized the green and red halls, exhibiting the works which earned him fame as a marine painter.
Source: - Panorama Mesdag - The Hague - The Netherlands -