HENDRIK WILLEM MESDAG (Dutch, 1831-1915). Fishing on the Choppy Sea near Scheveningen. Oil on canvas. 18-3/8 x 14-3/8 in...

Description

HENDRIK WILLEM MESDAG (Dutch, 1831-1915)
Fishing on the Choppy Sea near Scheveningen
Oil on canvas
18-3/8 x 14-3/8 inches (46.7 x 36.5 cm)
Signed lower left: H.W. Mesdag

PROVENANCE:
Private collection, Texas.

NOTE:
We are grateful to Jeroen Kapelle, Assistant Curator of Nineteenth-Century Art at the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD) (Netherlands Institute for Art History), who has examined high resolution photographs of this seascape and considers it to be the work of H. W. Mesdag. He considers the brushwork, and the way the waves and boats are handled, to be consistent with Mesdag's manner, and believes the scene to be painted off the Dutch coast near Scheveningen.

The steady wind in the sails of these boats, the strong rolling waves and slightly overcast skies combine to give a marvelous atmospherically charged effect to the present work. Mesdag was a master of sea painting, and specialized in depictions of the fishing boats that plied the shore off the coast of Scheveningen where the weather shifts very rapidly. Although this work is undated, it has the muscularity associated with Mesdag's work from the later 1890s and early 1900s. With remarkable deftness and economy, Mesdag created a dramatic splash of wave against the side of the largest vessel. Just a few strokes of a brush loaded with white pigment kick up from the surface of the water, and are dragged over the mast with a brisk and experienced flick of the brush. This painting has strong affinities with two very similar vertical compositions which Johan Poort reproduced as full color plates on pages 373 and 374 of his Hendrik Willem Mesdag 1831-1915. Oeuvrecatalogus, Wassenaar, 1989.



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