Back from fishing

About this artwork.

Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1831 - 1915) was a painter, watercolorist, etcher and lithographer from Groningen. His teachers were C.B. Buijs and J.H. Egenberger, head teacher at Academy Minerva Groningen. Mesdag showed an interest in drawing and painting at an early age, but only decided to make a definitive life as a painter in 1866 at the age of 35. He qualified in painting in Brussels and discovered his specialism on the German island of Norderney: the sea. The sea, the skies and the atmosphere would become the basis for his artistic work. In 1869 he moved to The Hague, on the Laan van Meerdervoort, where the Mesdag museum can be found, and often rented an office in Scheveningen on the Scheveningen boulevard to be close to the sea. One of his favorite subjects to paint was the traditional fishing fleet in Scheveningen. When, to everyone's surprise, he earned the gold medal in 1870 with a large seascape at a major art exhibition in Paris, the Paris Salon, his reputation was immediately established in the Netherlands.

In Back from fishing, Mesdag painted so-called 'bomschuiten', the successor to the previous version. These were sailing vessels that were used, among other things, by the sea fishermen of the North Sea coast because of the flat bottom. That this concerns Scheveningen can be seen from the inscription 'Sch' on the sail of the ship. The ships have just arrived and the sails will be lowered immediately. Villages by the sea such as Scheveningen, Katwijk, Noordwijk and Zandvoort had no harbor and the wide fishing boats 'stranded', as it were, with their catch intentionally on the sand strip in front of the dunes. In the foreground a fisherman wading through the water.

In 1901, the famous Mesdag donated the painting of very generous dimensions to the municipality, in response to the congratulations of the municipal council on the occasion of his 70th birthday. It was a thank you for the congratulations. Former Groninger Mesdag wanted the masterpiece to be given a place in the town hall of his hometown. The painting measures 2.20 by 1.86 meters with frame seems to have been cut out of another work by him, the world-famous Panorama in The Hague. It is surrounded by a baroque frame with delicate ornaments and a beautiful gold leaf border. Such work of art is difficult to keep clean, but it was pampered, kept dust-free and cleaned year after year. In the 1990s, an overzealous cleaning lady armed with corrosive soapy water tackled the dusty frame. She came, like all her predecessors, with outstretched arms to somewhere halfway. And so it happened that gradually all the gold leaf at the bottom of the painting had disappeared: simply polished away. When the painting was due for restoration, the frame was also repaired and gilded again at the same time. The entire annual art budget of the town hall was spent on it.

Many may know the name Mesdag because of the H.W. Mesdagstraat in the ‘Painters district’. Hendrik Willem Mesdag lived from 1856 to 1861 on the Vismarkt in Groningen, in one of the first stone houses in this part of the city and what is now known as Stadscafé Pronk.

Facts & Figures.

• Artist(s)
  Hendrik Willem Mesdag

• Year of creation
  1899

• Dimensions (in cm)
  227x187

• Collection
  Town Hall Collection

• Technic
  Oil paint on canvas