Museum Mesdag: Catalogue of Paintings and Drawings
Hardcover
1996 · Zwolle
by Leeman, Fred, Hanna Pennock, Saskia de Bodt, and Ronald de Leeuw
Zwolle: Waanders Uitgeverij, 1996. Hardcover. VG-/VG- scratch on dust jacket which went through to cover, light general wear to dust jacket.. Burnt orange cloth boards with stamped lettering on front and bronze lettering on spine. Color-illustrated dust jacket with yellow and white lettering. 460 pp. BW and some color illustrations. Over a 30-year period, the Hague marine painter Hendrik Willem Mesdag 1831-1915 purchased over 800 works of art. The outcome of this feverish activity can still be found in the museum he founded in The Hague. Built by Mesdag in 1887 as an annex to his house and studio in order to accommodate his growing collection, it was donated to the Dutch state in 1903 together with its contents of more than 360 paintings and drawings. Roughly half the works were by his contemporaries of the Hague School, while most of the rest are by artists of the School of Barbizon and French Realists: 12 Corots, 25 Daubignys, 12 Rousseaus, 7 Millets, 7 Courbets, and numerous works by Diaz, Dupre, Troyon, Decamps. It has been hailed as the most important Barbizon collection outside France. Being a painter's choice, the collection is idiosyncratic in its preference for sketchy paintings that show the artists engaged in the process of creation. -Amazon. (Inventory #: 164161)