Van Gogh Museum Journal 1996

[p. 41]

On the occasion of the reopening of the Museum Mesdag
Henri Loyrette⁺

Often somewhat besotted with itself, art history thinks only of schools, style and influences, and is only too happy to neglect such adjacent sciences as history and geography. Today, in honouring the Museum Mesdag, I am going to borrow chiefly from genealogy and morphology.

I would like you to think back to 1903 and to Ernest Lavisse's monumental twenty-eight volume history of France, and specifically to the preamble by Paul Vidal de la Blache, his admirable Tableau de géographie de la France. Here great stress is laid upon the natural links uniting France with her northern neighbours, links that enable one to glide from the plains of the Ile de France towards Flanders and Holland without encountering the slightest obstacle. ‘Even from Paris,’ he adds, ‘one has a sense of contact with the canals, factories, and railways pressing in through the open fissure that runs between Ménilmontant and Montmartre; the very plain itself seems to flee northwards.’ Lying between France and the Netherlands, the geographer informs us, modern Belgium has a vocation as a ‘country of transit’ - and indeed, this was a role that proved essential to Mesdag's discovery of French art; for it was not only via Roelofs, but also via Belgium that Mesdag discovered a significant number of French painters.

Vidal de la Blache wrote these lines at the same time that Degas, already an old man, recalled his youth in a fashion that is now rather striking: for when we see his first works the thought does not readily occur that he was thinking of Holland as he painted them. ‘When we began, Fantin-Latour, Whistler and I,’ he confided to a friend, ‘we were, all three of us, on the same road, the one to Holland.’ Degas did not complete his journey down this road; Mesdag, however, travelled precisely the same route, but in the opposite direction.

It is a strange coincidence that the same year, 1903, should be the year in which Mesdag donated his collection to the state. It is a coincidence equally strange that when he did so - just at the time the geographer was drawing up his Tableau of France, and Degas was reminiscing - the same much-travelled road from France to Holland was falling into relative disuse. For, increasingly, artists were heading south, to the Midi: the Midi of Cézanne, and of Mesdag's compatriot, Van Gogh.

That is why, when the Museum Mesdag opened its doors, it in fact bore witness to a bygone era, bringing with it the nostalgia of that departed time. It was a collection of an art that was still modern but no longer contemporary. The French works, if for a moment we restrict ourselves to these, are of one French school, the School of Barbizon, whose apogee had come half a century earlier. Thus, when Mesdag started collecting them in 1870, they were - to resort to a convenient neologism - no longer avant-garde. I would like to emphasise this slight time-lag even though it is almost imperceptible to us now, for it is what made the museum so particular and its creator one of the most original collectors of the 19th century.

We should once again praise this collection for its range and quality. We all know that the Barbizon painters can often be repetitive, and that nothing can be more tiring than the dull juxtaposition, room after room in many a museum, of those deep forests, those muddy seas, those sheep, those peasants enclosed in their great gilded frames. Mesdag, however, gathered together masterpieces, and many of them: by Corot, Courbet, Daubigny, Millet and by Théodore Rousseau. His selection of difficult canvases such as Millet's Hagar and Ismael (one of the artist's chefs d'oeuvre) demonstrated a taste that was both singular and true. Mesdag avoided works that were precise,

+ This article is a translation of the speech given by Henri Loyrette, director of the Musée d'Orsay, on the occasion of the reopening of the Museum Mesdag in The Hague on 12 October 1996.

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fig 1.
The Mesdags, c. 1906, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, Museum Mesdag Archive

pretty or finished, favouring instead those that were sketchy, barely commercial, and sometimes violent. This is what distinguishes Mesdag from his peers.

Nonetheless, within a European context, he was far from unique, and many examples might be given of fine collectors in France, Belgium and the German-speaking countries. For instance, in Brussels there was the politician Jules van Praet, who, in the 1860s, collected Millet, Troyon, Delacroix, Théodore Rousseau and Corot. In Paris there was Alfred Chauchard, the proprietor of the Grands Magasins du Louvre, an amateur of the same artists; his collection was dominated by Millet's Angelus, now at the Musée d'Orsay. There was also Thomy Thiéry, who, between 1880 and 1895, collected comparable works that were later bequeathed to the Louvre.

Mesdag was not, then, unique; and his tastes were shared by many of his solid bourgeois contemporaries. From then on, the painters he collected were widely appreciated and widely sought, and therefore expensive. The difference is that Mesdag was himself a painter, and this was a factor that made him profoundly distinct from the names cited above; it brought him great homogeneity, and an approach to acquisition that was both considered and perceptive. Unlike Chauchard, who amassed masterpieces at vast prices with all the vanity of a nouveau riche, Mesdag made his selections with the love and patience of the true art-lover, leaving to the wealthy bourgeoisie the more conventional paintings that had been made for show.

Mesdag's particularity can also be measured in terms of the artists he refrained from collecting. Meissonier is just one of these, a painter so capable and so precise that certain of his adulators saw in him the rebirth of the Dutch Golden Age. This ‘giant among dwarves,’ as Degas characterised him, was widely represented in the collections of Van Praet, Chauchard and Thomy Thiéry. But, naturally, he is absent at Mesdag's: his smooth meticulousness is the exact opposite of everything the collector appreciated: the quickness and vivacity of the esquisse, the taste for paint itself. Mesdag's cousin Alma-Tadema was not mistaken when he said that Mesdag might one day become a Courbet, but never a Meissonier.

Neither was Mesdag unique as a painter who loved painting; if one confines oneself to the French domain he might simultaneously be reminiscent of Bonnat and Degas: the former a collector of 17th-century Spanish painters, but also of Ingres and Puvis de Chavannes; the latter a collector of Ingres, Delacroix, Manet, Cézanne, Gauguin and many others. In the case of Bonnat, however, the painter and the collector appeared to be two entirely different people - indeed, almost to be at odds with one another. And with regard to Degas, it is known that he assembled a large number of fine works at the end of the century with the purpose of founding a museum, but then abandoned the idea. Mesdag is thus unique after all, and his museum along with him.

His strategy was nonetheless similar to that of Degas, who collected canvases by his immediate predecessors and his contemporaries, and then added works by himself, stating that he did not wish (in contrast, for example, to Gustave Moreau) to devote a museum to his glory alone, but to be surrounded by his brethren. By giving such a prominent place to Ingres and Delacroix, Degas reconciled them and presented himself as the third member of a glorious trinity that closed the 19th century in a grandiose fashion. In a similar manner, Mesdag, by adding his works to those of the Barbizon and the Hague Schools, established his own position, acknowledged his friendships - and also made a plea pro domo. By being opened to others, the museum became a manifesto. And it is here that we must speak of genealogy, trace relationships, and return to distant ancestries.

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It has often been said that the works collected by Mesdag, including his own, belong to the tradition of 17th-century Dutch landscape painting. Two centuries on, Mesdag saw the many and richly-varied lines of descent, the greater part of which had become disseminated abroad, to Belgium and France. Its proponents were all artists of simple tastes, who gave pride of place to mundane motifs and defied sentimentality and the picturesque. They rejected theatrical impulses and refused to ‘make compositions,’ which had been one of the key concepts in academic teaching at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Nothing could be a better illustration of this will towards simplicity than Mesdag's reported judgement of The wave, Courbet's submission to the Salon of 1870. ‘Magnificent,’ he is supposed to have said, ‘but is it really the sea?’ For, like many of his contemporaries, Mesdag took nature according to the precept of Théophile Gautier: ‘nature is as it is.’ What he admired in Daubigny was clearly what the French poet admired: paintings in which ‘the painter did not mix his personal sentiments into his reproduction of the location’; paintings that are ‘pieces of nature, cut up and surrounded by a golden frame.’ And he could easily have claimed as his own the pronouncement on Théodore Rousseau made by the champion of realism, Castagnary: ‘simple, calm, imbibed with naturalism, he respects the precise relationship between trees, animals, man and the sky.’

Curiously, Mesdag did not admit to this lineage those later artists who also turned gladly to the Dutch painters of the 17th century and posed as the legitimate heirs of the Barbizon painters, the Impressionists. We know of the debt that Monet, Pissarro and Sisley confessed to owe to the painters of Barbizon and to Courbet; we know of their filial feelings towards the one they called ‘papa Corot.’ For Mesdag, however, they were not part of the same family; they were not of the same blood. Van Gogh underlined the fierceness of Mesdag's attitude towards them: ‘Mesdag and the others should stop making fun of the Impressionists.’ It was thus, in the 1860s, that Mesdag viewed the subtle transition from Realism to Impressionism, from Courbet to Manet, and soon to Monet and Degas - rejecting it, and considering its heroes not as the legal inheritors, but as the offspring of a younger line bastardised by misalliances and dubious parentage. As far as Mesdag was concerned, French art ended with the generation of 1840. For him, the real descendants were Belgians such as Louis Artan - and the Dutch.

fig 2.
The Mesdags, c. 1906, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, Museum Mesdag Archive

In the museum he built, his own paintings belonged to this filiation. Naturally, he paid homage to Corot, Courbet, Daubigny, Decamps, Diaz, Dupré, Millet and Rousseau, but then these painters also served to justify Mesdag himself. He became the child of Millet and of Rousseau, just as in his own museum Degas would have been the child of Ingres and Delacroix. Yet, to me, curiously, Mesdag's own painting seems to be far removed from the French manner, and if it were necessary to identify his closest kinsman, I would indicate the Franco-Belgian artist Alfred Stevens. Completely oriented towards an earlier age, Mesdag's painting probably suffers from this slight time-lag, whereby it is no longer quite of its own time.

Mesdag's true masterpiece is his museum. Previously it was hard to see this; today it is blindingly clear. Containing so many beautiful works collected together solely for the pleasure of looking at them, this committed and partisan collection is a fascinating reflection upon the history of 19th-century art. It is also, quite simply, a beautiful story, that of a determined painter, a latecomer to his vocation, presenting himself among his own fraternity. Today, there are many reasons to salute Mesdag. There are many reasons that we French should follow in the footsteps of so many others and take the road to Holland.

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fig. 1
Mesdag as ‘Mayor of St Luke's,’ 1895, The Hague, Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD)

[p. 45]

Hendrik Willem Mesdag and the artistic life of The Hague
John Sillevis

‘Take Mesdag, a real mastodon or hippopotamus. Yet he manages to sell his pictures.’ Vincent van Gogh

In a booklet from 1880 in which Johan Gram describes an imaginary visit to the various members of the painters' association known as Pulchri Studio, the journalist and art critic wrote the following about Mesdag: ‘If anyone, it is Mesdag who has acquired, as if by magic, par droit de conquête, an independent place for himself in the art world. Many still recall the objections that were raised in the bosom of Pulchri Studio in 1869 against admitting the then unknown Mr Mesdag as a “working member.” In the title of the painting he exhibited that year in The Hague - What will become of them? - the “them” was sarcastically changed to “him” and applied to the author. Yet the doubts about Mesdag's vocation were brilliantly belied when his painting Breakers in the North Sea was crowned with the gold medal of honour at the Paris Salon in 1870, a distinction very few Dutch artists had won. With that, Mesdag's name was established, and he assumed his singular place in our artists' association. A few years before, no one who had seen Mr Mesdag working in the banking business in Groningen would have augured such a future for him.’¹

1 J. Gram, Onze schilders in Pulchri Studio, Rotterdam [1880], pp. 55-56: ‘Zoo iemand, dan heeft Mesdag als bij tooverslag, par droit de conquête, zich in de kunstenaarswereld eene zelfstandige plaats verworven. Menigeen herinnert zich nog, welke bezwaren er in 1869 in den boezem van Pulchri Studio geopperd werden om den toen nog ongekenden heer Mesdag als “werkend lid” op te nemen. In den titel zijner in dat jaar te 's-Gravenhage tentoongestelde schilderij: “Wat zal er van hen worden?” was sarcastisch het hen in hem veranderd en op den maker toegepast. Eene spoedig daarop volgende gebeurtenis logenstrafte echter op schitterende wijze dien twijfel aan Mesdags roeping, toen zijne schilderij “Les brisants de la Mer du Nord” in 1870 in het Salon te Parijs bekroond werd met het gouden eeremetaal, eene onderscheiding, die nog zeer zelden een Hollandschen kunstenaar te deel gevallen was. Van toen af was Mesdags naam gevestigd, en nam hij zijne afzonderlijke plaats in onze kunstenaarsbent in. Eenige jaren tevoren zou niemand, die den heer Mesdag in den geldhandel te Groningen werkzaam gezien had, hem een dergelijke toekomst voorspeld hebben.’

The ‘Breakers in the North Sea’

There is something slightly ironic about Gram's account of Mesdag's meteoric career after the triumph of his Breakers in the North Sea at the Paris Salon, but no trace of irony or sarcasm can be found in later profiles of the artist. Mesdag had become a man of influence, with a position in The Hague's artistic life that there was no getting

[p. 46]

around. One must not forget, however, that Gram was writing in 1880, that is, before the Panorama was painted, and before Mesdag's legendary presidency of Pulchri Studio. Aside from that, one would be wrong to infer from Gram's article that Mesdag only joined Pulchri after his success in Paris: he joined the painters' association as early as January 1869. Whether his relations in Brussels, such as Alma-Tadema and Willem Roelofs, were instrumental in having him admitted is not known.

When Mesdag left Brussels and moved to The Hague he was fully aware of the significance of membership in artistic societies such as Pulchri Studio. While still living in the Belgian capital he had joined the Société libre des Beaux-Arts, which was established in 1868.² Even after moving to The Hague he made a point of keeping up his membership in the Société for some time; as he wrote his Belgian friend Alfred Verwee on 15 November 1869, ‘Dites au secretaire de la Société libre des Beaux-Arts que je continuerai à payer ma cotisation annuelle: fr. 25. Veuillez les payer pour moi. Je vous les rendrai à ma visite à Bruxelles.’³

From the time of its foundation in 1847, Pulchri offered its members numerous facilities which were of particular importance to aspiring artists. There they could draw from the draped model and take part in art viewings. From 1867 Pulchri began organising its own shows, in which members were welcome to take part; moreover, the board was responsible for the organisation of the Tentoonstelling van Levende Meesters, the exhibition held every third year in The Hague, and otherwise by turns in Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

In the first half of the 19th century, opportunities for artists to show new work to art lovers and buyers were rather rare. Besides the biennial presentation of living artists, the Levende Meesters, no other exhibitions of contemporary art were mounted on a regular basis. It was only toward the end of the century that dealers began presenting one-man shows of artists they represented and associations did the same for their members - and still only very hesitantly, at that.

Contemporary collections were amassed by well-meaning artistic associations in the hope of one day establishing a museum for modern art. It was not until the very last years of the century that exhibitions became a common feature of Dutch cultural life, but early in Mesdag's career membership in an artists' association was a prerequisite for future success.⁴

The viewings at Pulchri provided the opportunity for a direct encounter between the artist (‘the working member’) and the collector-art lover (‘the art-loving member’). General viewings occurred twice a year under the supervision of commissioners whose task it was to monitor the quality of the works submitted, which they had the right to reject. The commissioners were also involved in sales; the association received a modest percentage of the sale price.

In addition to general there were also special viewings, where only one collection was shown. In contrast to the former, the purpose of the latter was not commercial. G.H. Marius, author of a standard work on 19th-century Dutch art, described the procedure of the viewings as follows: ‘At first they were held only in the evening. We sat at long tables and the drawings were passed around [...]. The watercolour collections of Prince Alexander, Völcker van Soelen, Mesdag, Langerhuyzen, already began at these viewings, which would continue to be held at Arti et Amicitiae (in Amsterdam) and at Pulchri for a long time. When the membership became larger, or as a result of the evolution of this art, the drawings were placed on lecterns. Around 1880 the public was rather reactionary as regards art, and we remember the orations which expressed concerns about the dangers for the future of art that were held there about the delightful colour drawings of Jacob Maris, since his sketches, as Maris' drawings were called, were presented as though they were finished works of art; it was a buzzing of flies over very highly worked watercolours [...].’⁵

Thus, Mesdag managed to kill two birds with one stone: besides the chance to display his own work, the viewings were also an excellent opportunity for him to expand his collection independent of the art trade. Around 1880, moreover, the art-loving members of Pulchri were

2 See S. de Bodt, ‘Hendrik Willem Mesdag en Brussel,’ Oud Holland 95 (1981), pp. 59-84 and idem, ‘Pulchri Studio: het imago van een kunstenaarsvereniging in de negentiende eeuw,’ De Negentiende Eeuw 14 (1990), pp. 25-42. In 1873 Mesdag terminated his membership in the Société libre des Beaux-Arts.

3 Wassenaar, Stichting Mesdag Documentatie, ‘Brieven van Hendrik Willem Mesdag: Inleiding tot de correspondentie van Hendrik Willem Mesdag,’ n.d., p. 8.

4 J.J.Th. Sillevis, ‘Van plint tot plafond: De presentatie van eigentijdse kunst in de negentiende eeuw,’ in F. van Burkom (ed.), De kunst van het tentoonstellen, The Hague & Amsterdam 1991, pp. 26-42.

5 G.H. Marius, De Hollandsche Schilderkunst in de negentiende eeuw, 2d ed., The Hague 1920, pp. 189-90: ‘Het was in den aanvang alleen des avonds. Men zat aan lange tafels en de teekeningen werden doorgegeven [...]. De waterverfcollecties van Prins Alexander, Völcker van Soelen, Mesdag, Langerhuyzen, zijn reeds begonnen bij deze kunstbeschouwingen, waar de teekeningen, toen het leedental grooter werd, of ook al volgend den gang dezer kunst, op lessenaars geplaatst werden, en nog lang in Arti en Pulchri gehouden zijn. Het publiek was omstreeks 1880 in Den Haag nog al reactionnair inzake kunst, en wij herinneren ons de oraties, welke daar voor de verrukkelijke kleurteekeningen van Jacob Maris gehouden werden, bedenkingen voor het gevaar van de toekomst der kunst, sedert men schetsen, zoals men de teekeningen van Maris noemde, voor compleet werk liet zien; het was een gegons van vliegen over zeer geserreerde aquarellen [...].’

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fig. 2
Hendrik Willem Mesdag, Breakers in the North Sea, c. 1870, Wassenaar, Collection J. Poort

definitely not yet accustomed to the Hague School. The irritation over the ‘buzzing of flies,’ as Marius so evocatively described the reaction of the conservative collectors, must certainly have contributed to the establishment of the society of watercolourists known as the Hollandsche Teeken-Maatschappij - or, more popularly, the htm - in 1876, in which Mesdag played a decisive role.

In the span of several years Mesdag had gone from an unknown amateur painter to an international celebrity. The bronze medal he won at Antwerp in 1867 was only a beginning, at most a stimulus for Mesdag himself, but the gold medal at the Paris Salon was of historical significance. In 1872 The Hague refused to be outdone: there, too, the artist came away with gold. Bronze followed at London in 1873, and gold again at Lyons in 1874. The Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876 brought the artist yet another gold medal.⁶

In 1873 Mesdag was honoured with a royal visit to his studio. Other artists of his generation had waited years for such a recognition, if they received it at all, whereas Mesdag seemed to go from height to height. It must of course be said that he left little to chance. The surviving fragments of his correspondence evince his unflagging ambition to reach the top.

6 See J. Poort, Hendrik Willem Mesdag 1831-1915, Wassenaar 1990, pp. 490-91.

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In the critic J. van Santen Kolff's famous article in De Banier, which introduced the Hague School in 1875, Mesdag was cast as one of the most important painters of the new movement. In the list of members that the author gave, Mesdag's name is mentioned first. At one point Van Santen Kolff asks rhetorically, ‘Can anyone other than a Dutchman see, conceive and represent nature this way, or put down such a wealth of poetry in the most unadorned, sober rendering of the simplest reality? I doubt it. At least for nature in Holland, the first masters of our landscape school - such as Mauve, Apol or Maris - are peerless specialists.’⁷ Mesdag's submission to the Levende Meesters exhibition of 1875, On the Dutch seacoast (present location unknown) showed that he was the preeminent exponent of the ‘realism of the true, most healthy sort,’ a beacon for his fellow artists. ‘It is my heartfelt conviction,’ Kolff wrote, ‘that all our landscape and marine painters sooner or later should give expression to that side if they wish to continue creating in the spirit of our time.’⁸

7 J. van Santen Kolff, ‘Een blik in de Hollandsche schilderschool onzer dagen,’ De Banier, tijdschrift van ‘Het Jonge Nederland’ 4 (1875), no. 1, pp. 158-87: ‘Kan een ander dan een Hollander de natuur zóó zien, zóó opvatten en weergeven, zulk een schat aan poëzie nederleggen in de meest onopgesmukte, sobere voorstelling der eenvoudigste werkelijkheid? Ik betwijfel 't. Althans voor de Hollandsche natuur zijn de eerste meesters onzer landschapschool - neem b.v. Mesdag of Mauve, Apol of Maris - onovertrefbare specialisten.’

8 Ibid., p. 187: ‘[...] realisme van de ware, allergezondste soort’; ‘Dien kant moeten, naar mijn innige overtuiging, onze landscap- en zeeschilders allen vroeg of laat uit, willen zij naar den geest van onzen tijd, blijvends scheppen.’

The Dutch Watercolour Society

It had not taken Mesdag long to convince those around him of his qualities as a representative of modern Dutch art; not much later he got the chance to prove that he also had administrative talents. On 31 January 1876 he helped found the aforementioned htm;⁹ on the first board sat Mesdag, Jacob Maris and Anton Mauve.

The apparently unsatisfactory handling of the art viewings at Pulchri Studio and the inadequacy of the association's attempts to reach private collectors contrasted sharply with the example of the Société Belge des Aquarellistes. Mesdag's teacher Roelofs was one of the founders of this successful watercolour society. As early as 1858, three years after the establishment of the Société, Hardenberg, who was on Pulchri's board, had asked the Belgians whether it might be possible for members to participate in the Société's exhibitions in Brussels. No answer from Roelofs was forthcoming. The founders of the htm took a different approach, one in which Mesdag's influence is unmistakable. The watercolourists' association was founded independently of every other artists' organisation - including Pulchri - and therefore set out to find its own exhibition space and sources of income. The goal was clear: to carve out a separate niche for the watercolour (or ‘coloured drawing,’ as it was then called) as a finished work of art in its own right. This was to be achieved through annual exhibitions, in which members and guests would participate. The guests, known as ‘honorary members,’ hailed from every part of Europe. Clays and Madou were invited from Belgium; from Italy, Mosè Bianchi and Vincenzo Cabianca; from England, Herkomer and from Germany, Max Liebermann, to name only a few.

Mesdag was a born chairman. He looked for exhibition space with drive and eventually the burgomaster of The Hague placed the hall of the Akademie van Beeldende Kunsten at his disposal for every August. The first show was a huge success: entrance fees and catalogue sales brought in over 670 guilders, the watercolours themselves another 6,130 - an enormous sum in those days. Every member participated except David Bles, who thus did not comply with the regulations (formulated at the meeting of 27 March 1876), one of which stated that ‘Every ordinary member must submit at least one drawing for each exhibition.’ Mesdag was not one to draft regulations and then forget them, as Bles would soon discover. As the chairman wrote him on 25 June 1877, ‘Last year we were sadly bereft of your highly admired submissions. The board therefore urgently requests your cooperation, in the confidence that this year our second exhibition may be graced with your important contribution.’¹⁰

In 1879, when the Hollandsche Teeken-Maatschappij organised an exposition at the Grosvenor Gallery, London, Mesdag had already taken the initiative vis-à-vis Bles, and asked Pieter Stortenbeker to lend one of his drawings,

9 The founding members were J.J. van de Sande Bakhuyzen, C. Bisschop, Mrs K. Bisschop-Swift, D. Bles, B.J. Blommers, J. Bosboom, G. Henkes, J. Israëls, J. Maris, W. Maris, A. Mauve, H.W. Mesdag, Ph. Sadée and P. Stortenbeker. See W.B. Tholen (ed.), Notulen van de Hollandsche Teekenmaatschappij 1876-1901, n.p. [1914].

10 ‘Brieven,’ cit. (note 3), p. 4: ‘Ieder gewoon lid is gehouden tot het inzenden van minstens éene teekening voor iedere expositie.’ ‘Het vorige jaar bleven wij van uwe zeer gewaardeerde inzendingen verstoken, daarom roept het bestuur met aandrang uwe medewerking in, in het vertrouwen dat dit jaar, onze tweede tentoonstelling met uwe belangrijke bijdrage moge worden opgeluisterd.’

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fig. 3
Mesdag during the installation of an exhibition, The Hague, Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD)

entitled Orangists, for the exhibition. Mesdag notified Bles of this on 18 November 1879, and took the opportunity to add that ‘In accordance with the regulations of the Grosvenor Gallery, all drawings shall be framed in gold. [Sir Lawrence Alma-] Tadema will arrange things as best he can for us in London. We shall cover the cost of framing, of course. The point is to give the people of London a look at forty beautiful Dutch drawings. At the Grosvenor they [will be] hung together as a group and they will be mentioned in the catalogue.’¹¹ Bles sent his refusal by return post, at which point Mesdag's patience ran out: ‘Pursuant to your request,’ he replied, ‘I shall notify Mr Stortenbeker that the drawing in question, Orangists, may not be sent with the others for display at the Grosvenor Gallery: I am terribly sorry.’¹²

Bles could no longer expect mercy. On 1 April 1884 he received the following letter from Mesdag, co-signed by David Artz and Albert Neuhuijs, who were on the board of the htm at the time: ‘At the recent meeting of the Gentlemen Members of the Hollandsche Teeken-Maatschappij the minimal interest you have shown in the Maatschappij in your capacity as Founding Member came up. You have submitted nothing to the last Exhibitions. As a result, and at the request of many members, the Board feels it must ask you to resign your membership in the Hollandsche Teeken-Maatschappij, so that your place as founding member can be filled by another, ordinary member.’¹³

Politely but resolutely Mesdag removed David Bles from the rolls. Nor did he shrink from using the organisation as a pressure group. In 1876, that is, just prior to the

11 Ibid., p. 5: ‘Alle teekeningen zullen in gevolge het reglement der Grosvenor Gallery in goud worden geincadreerd. Tadema bezorgt éen en ander bestens voor ons te London - de kosten van encadrement komen natuurlijk ten onzen laste -. Het doel is om eens een 40-tal mooye Hollandsche Teekeningen aan het Londonsche publiek te laten zien. Ze worden in Grosvenor afzonderlijk in een bloc gehangen en in de catalogue vermeld.’

12 Ibid., ‘Ingevolge uw verzoek zal ik den Heer Stortenbeker berichten dat de bewuste teekening Oranjeklanten niet mêe ter expositie voor The Grosvenor Gallery kan gaan: het spijt mij wel.’

13 Ibid., p. 8: ‘Op de onlangs gehouden vergadering van Heeren Leden der Hollandsche Teeken-Maatschappij kwam ter sprake de geringe belangstelling door UEd. in uwe hoedanigheid als Lid-Oprigter jegens de Maatschappij betoond. Op de laatste Tentoonstellingen toch zond UEd. geen uwer werken in. Naar aanleiding daarvan en op verzoek van vele leden heeft het Bestuur gemeend UEd. te moeten verzoeken voor het lidmaatschap der Hollandsche Teeken-Maatschappij te bedanken, opdat uwe plaats als lid oprigter door een ander gewoon lid kan worden vervuld.’

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society's foundation, Mesdag had objected to the fact that King William III had awarded the gold medal to Herman Koekkoek, Jr at the Levende Meesters exhibition organised by Arti in Amsterdam.¹⁴ Together with a number of fellow artists he wrote a ‘Petition from The Hague artists to H.M. the King’ and had it published in the Kunstkronijk. The signatories were, with one exception, members or founding members of the htm. The tone of the petition was again polite but resolute: ‘In making this great gold medal available it was undoubtedly Your Majesty's intention to incite the Dutch masters to add as much lustre as possible to the aforementioned exhibitions by submitting their most beautiful works, and urging them to do their utmost to make important contributions. It is [the artists'] deepest conviction that the commissioners charged by Your Majesty with the award of that medal have acquitted themselves of their task in such a noticeably peculiar fashion that Your Majesty's purpose was not served. They have therefore decided they are no longer able to conceal from Your Majesty the fact that for them the great royal medal has lost all its value, and that they henceforth shall refrain from competing for this royal honour.’¹⁵

William III's reaction is not recorded, but given his highly volatile personality he was undoubtedly enraged by this audacious statement from his ‘faithful subjects.’ In 1882 the king thus lost no time conferring the designation Koninklijk (or Royal) on the recently founded Genootschap van Nederlandsche Aquarellisten, whose membership was largely opposed to the Hague School and to the modern movement in Dutch art. He even invited them to use the Gotische Zaal opposite Paleis Noordeinde for exhibitions. Vincent van Gogh was among the visitors to the first exhibition of the newly initiated society.¹⁶

Mesdag's reaction was prompt. The foundation of the Koninklijk Genootschap was the main point of business at the meeting of the htm on 4 January 1882. A conciliatory missive addressed to the members of the htm had arrived from the board of the Koninklijk Genootschap, Messrs Herman ten Kate, Charles Rochussen and Cornelis Springer. The commissioners of the new watercolourists' association were: Jan Willem van Borselen, Johannes Stroebel, Jan Smits, Mari ten Kate and Elchanon Verveer. Rochussen, Van Borselen and Verveer were already members of the htm, but had concealed their involvement in the new society; Rochussen's membership was even honorary.

According to the minutes, ‘The consensus was that the new association had been established under the protection, direct or otherwise, of H.M. the King to take action against our association and to that end to hold exhibitions of drawings on the premises obligingly lent for that purpose by H.M. the King. [...] there was general indignation about this policy, to which three members of our association, entirely unbeknownst to the board, have assisted, namely Mr C. Rochussen, honorary member, and Messrs J.W. van Borselen and E. Verveer, ordinary members.’ An invitation to exhibit was unanimously declined. ‘Mr Bosboom proposed what he thought would be a polite and dignified form of refusal. [...] The chairman [H.W. Mesdag] wished the assembly success with this unanimous decision, and expressed the hope that the next exhibition would prove that there is power in harmony.’¹⁷

In fact, the htm was in a strong position. The minutes of the same meeting proudly stated that the 1881 exhibition had earned no less than 25, 135 guilders, as compared to 6, 130 in 1876, and that there had been a total of

14 See E. Fleurbaay and M. v.d. Wal, Koning Willem III en Arti, Amsterdam 1984, p. 27.

15 ‘Brieven,’ cit. (note 3), pp. 2-3: ‘Bij het beschikbaar stellen dezer groote gouden medaille heeft zeker bij Uwe Majesteit de bedoeling ten grondslag gelegen, de Nederlandsche meesters op te wekken om door het inzenden hunner schoonste werken aan genoemde tentoonstellingen zooveel mogelijk luister bij te zetten, en hen aan te sporen al hunne krachten in te spannen om belangrijke bijdragen te leveren. Het is hunne innige overtuiging dat de commissiën, aan wie door Uwe Majesteit de toekenning dier medaille was opgedragen, zich op zulk eene in het oog lopend vreemde wijze van hare taak hebben gekweten, dat daardoor Uwer Majesteits bedoeling niet is bereikt. Op grond hiervan hebben zij gemeend, niet langer voor Uwe Majesteit te mogen verzwijgen dat voor hen alle waarde aan de groote koninklijke medaille is ontnomen geworden, en zij zich voor 't vervolg van mededinging naar deze koninklijke onderscheiding zullen onthouden.’

16 As Vincent wrote his brother [266/232]: ‘I have gone to see the drawings in the Gotische Zaal; I thought the Rochussen was splendid. [...] There were also very beautiful things by Allebé, drawings from Artis and then a landscape with pine trees on the rocks at the coast, where in between one sees a fisherman's house at the bottom.’ The drawing is now in the Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam, under the title De Golf van Arcachon (inv. no. 1980:36). See exhib. cat. Hollandse aquarellen uit de 19de eeuw, Rome (Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe) & Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1985, no. 2.

17 Tholen, op. cit. (note 9), pp. 21-22: ‘Algemeen was de overtuiging dat de nieuwe maatschappij zoo niet onmiddellijk dan toch onder bepaalde bescherming van Z.M. den Koning was tot stand gekomen om tegenover onze maatschappij op te treden en daartoe op denzelfden tijd exposities van teekeningen te houden in het lokaal daartoe door Z.M. den Koning bereidwillig afgestaan. [ ] algemeen was de verontwaardiging over deze handelwijze, waartoe drie leden onzer vereeniging geheel buiten weten van het bestuur hunne medewerking hadden verleend, en wel de Heer C. Rochussen, eerelid, en de Heeren J.W. van Borselen en E. Verveer, gewone leden. [...] De heer Bosboom droeg hierop de vorm voor waarin het bedanken zijns inziens beleefd en waardig zoude kunnen worden ingekleed. [...] De voorzitter wenschte de vergadering geluk met dit met eenparige stemmen genomen besluit en sprak den wensch uit dat de eerstvolgende tentoonstelling het bewijs mogt leeveren dat eendragt magt is.’

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4, 349 visitors. One piquant detail was that Prince Alexander - King William's son - had purchased a work at the exhibition costing 8,900 guilders. A year later the opening was attended by Princess Marianne of the Netherlands and Prince Albert of Prussia.

Van Gogh, who was generally very generous in his admiration for other artists, refused to be dragged into the controversy between the Koninklijk Genootschap and the htm, though he himself would have liked nothing better than to join the latter. Indeed he was still thinking about membership when he left for Drenthe: in a letter to Theo he wrote ‘My plan is to make plenty of headway with painting in Drenthe, so as to be eligible for the Teeken-Maatschappij when I return.’¹⁸ As it happened, William III's plan to thwart the htm failed: in three years' time the Koninklijk Genootschap was disbanded, whereas the Hollandsche Teeken-Maatschappij flourished until the early 20th century.

Mesdag served as chairman of the htm until 1885, at which point, despite the pleas of the members, he stepped down. He was succeeded by Jozef Israëls.

18 384/319: ‘Mijn plan is het in Drenthe een eind ver te brengen met het schilderen, zoodat ik in de termen val voor de Teekenmaatschappij als ik terug kom.’

Barbizon exhibitions

The success of the htm must have stimulated Mesdag to collaborate on an entirely different project, namely the bicentennial exhibition of the Haagse Akademie van Beeldende Kunsten in 1882. Called simply the Tentoonstelling van schilderijen uit particuliere verzamelingen (or Exhibition of paintings from private collections), it included works from the collections of H.W. Mesdag, his brother Taco, F.H.M. Post and Verstolk Völcker. For the first time in the Netherlands, the Barbizon School could be seen in depth. There were ten works by Corot, eight by Diaz, four by Dupré and Troyon, and three by Théodore Rousseau. The critic who wrote for Het Vaderland suggested the students of the Akademie pay close attention: ‘[...] they could learn what probity, finish and distinction are, and at the same time that one can take all of that to heart and still be true to nature.’¹⁹

One of the more observant visitors to the exhibition was Van Gogh. To his brother he wrote, ‘I recently saw the exhibition of French art from the collections Mesdag, Post, etc. There are a lot of beautiful things there by Dupré, Corot, Daubigny, Diaz, Courbet, Breton, Jacque, etc. I thought that large sketch by Théodore Rousseau from the Mesdag collection was really beautiful as well: a drift of cattle in the Alps.’ He was referring to Cattle in the Jura Mountains, now in the Museum Mesdag. ‘The Duprés are superb, and there is a Daubigny - large thatched roofs against the slope of a hill - which I can't get enough of. So, too, a small Corot, a coastal scene, and Lisière de bois on a summer morning, around 4 o'clock or thereabouts. A single small pink cloud indicates the sun will rise soon. A stillness, a calmness, and a peace which are enchanting. I'm happy to have seen all of that.’²⁰ Mesdag was rewarded for his efforts on behalf of the Haagse Akademie with an honorary membership. The other new honorary members were David Bles, Johannes Bosboom, Herman ten Kate and Jozef Israëls.²¹

In 1890 a one-man show followed - a novelty in those days - devoted to Daubigny, and in 1892 a Millet exhibition, both in the galleries of Pulchri Studio. Mesdag was once again one of the principal lenders, as he was to subsequent Pulchri exhibitions devoted to modern French art - in 1896 and 1900, for example.

19 Het Vaderland, 26 June 1882: ‘[...] zij konden er leeren, wat de degelijkheid, doorwrochtheid en distinctie zijn, en zich tevens overtuigen, hoe men dat alles behartigen kan, zonder op te houden waar en natuurgetrouw te zijn.’ See also J.H. Kraan, ‘Barbizon en het verzamelen in Nederland,’ in J.J.Th. Sillevis (ed.), exhib. cat. De School van Barbizon: Franse Meesters van de 19de eeuw, Ghent (Museum voor Schone Kunsten), The Hague (Gemeentemuseum) & Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1885-86, pp. 70-88.

20 247/215.

21 See J.J. Beljon, exhib. cat. 300 Jaar Koninklijke Akademie van Beeldende Kunsten 's-Gravenhage, 1682-1982, The Hague (Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten) 1982, p. 60. The author states mistakenly that Mesdag and Jozef Israëls were former pupils of the Haagse Tekenakademie.

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fig. 4
Dinner in honour of the 50th wedding anniversary of Hendrik Willem Mesdag and Sientje Mesdag-van Houten, 1906. Jozef Israëls can be seen on Sientje's left. The Hague, Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD)

Pulchri Studio

Given Mesdag's many successes, and particularly the fame he won with his ‘Panorama maritime,’ it seems curious that he was elected chairman of Pulchri Studio so late. On 1 October 1889 the day finally arrived. With energy and resolve Mesdag led the Schilderkundig Genootschap (or Painters' Society), as it was officially known, until 1907. During his watch Pulchri became much more international. It was represented at many important exhibitions, where Mesdag effectively promoted the professional interests of the participating members. Pulchri Studio and the Hague School became almost synonymous. Whenever modern Dutch art was shown abroad, painters of the Hague School were generally involved and almost all of them belonged to Pulchri.

In the 1880s the artists of the Hague School were still considered innovative, but in the last years of the 19th century they could no longer be regarded as the young avant-garde. Nearly all of them were now established, well-paid artists; their position was uncontested, and many young imitators eagerly adopted their themes and painting method in the hopes of sharing in the glow of their success. For aspiring artists who took a more independent stance vis-à-vis the Hague School and its bastion Pulchri Studio, it was an uphill battle.

As far as Mesdag was concerned, modern art was defined primarily by the Barbizon School, within which he had a definite predilection for Daubigny; he also admired Courbet. That he collected so many works by Antonio Mancini, with his highly unusual painting techniques, may point to a personal sympathy for the Italian which accompanied his admiration for the works' purely artistic qualities. Impressionism, Pointillism, and Symbolism lay outside Mesdag's field of vision; so great was his influence within Pulchri, in fact, that these movements gained little or no entrance to the association.

Although Mesdag had participated - by invitation - in the annual exhibition of Les Vingt in Brussels in 1885, in the years that followed he apparently neglected his contacts with this group of Belgian avant-garde artists. As early as 1886 a new generation was on offer at Les Vingt: Odilon

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fig. 5
Mesdag receiving honours at Pulchri Studio (on the occasion of his 50th wedding anniversary), 1906, The Hague, Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD)

Redon, James McNeill Whistler, and the Dutch artists Isaac Israëls and George Hendrik Breitner were now among the invités.²² Jan Toorop, who had joined in the meantime, submitted no less than 21 works. A year later, Seurat and Pissarro were the pezzi grossi. The same Hague School painters who had had to defend themselves against the older generation in the 1870s, could now not stop talking about ‘modernists’ and ‘vandals.’

In 1892 there was even a row over the tableauxvivants at Pulchri, which had long been famous: that year, Albert Verwey read his own poetry beside five scenes from the Old Testament, designed by Marius Bauer in collaboration with Philippe Zilcken. Considered all too modern, this sparked a vociferous protest and was decried as the work of jokers, the ‘Huns and Vandals of the Nieuwe Gids.’²³ Mesdag stayed at the helm despite the uproar, but Bauer and Zilcken were forced to resign their administrative posts. Mesdag's defence of Bauer and Zilcken was a bit lukewarm. He explained to the press there was no question of experimenting with ‘modernists’; the two gentlemen had been on the board for years. Yet the very accusation of modernism was sufficient cause for dropping them, although it was only to preserve the peace.

Clearly, the younger generation had to find its own quarters. This prompted the foundation of the Haagse Kunstkring on 1 May 1891 in the Café Riche, on the corner of the Passage and the Buitenhof. The new society aimed ‘to promote painting, sculpture, literature, music, applied arts, as well as association and cooperation with the practitioners of these various arts’²⁴ or, in other words, to be a Dutch embodiment of the new ideal known as the Gesamtkunstwerk. One of the founders was Théophile de Bock. Although Bock was said to have been bitter about his collaboration on Mesdag's Panorama, there was no animosity between Pulchri and the Kunstkring. Many artists were members of both associations, and in the first years work by Hague School painters, such as the brothers Maris and

22 Centre international pour l'étude du XIX siècle (ed.), Les XX, Bruxelles: Catalogue des dix expositions annuelles, Brussels 1981; Jane Block, Les XX and Belgian Avant-Gardism, 1868-1894, Ann Arbor 1981; and L. Tibbe, ‘Les XX en de Nederlandse schilderkunst 1883-1893,’ De Negentiende Eeuw 5 (1981), no. 3, pp. 115-47.

23 The Hague, Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), Philippe Zilcken, ‘Herinneringen van een Hollandse schilder der negentiende eeuw, 1877-1927,’ pp 71-72.

24 See T. van Kalmthout, ‘Een gezellige en nuttige vereniging: de Haagsche Kunstkring in het kunstverenigingsleven rond 1900,’ in E. Fernhout, et al., De Haagse Bohème op zoek naar Europa, Zutphen 1992, p. 28: ‘[...] de bevordering van schilderkunst, beeldhouwkunst, fraaie letteren, toonkunst, kunstindustrie en van aansluiting bij en samenwerking tusschen de beoefenaren dier verschillende kunsten.’

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fig. 6
Mesdag's ‘Carte d'exposant,’ The Hague, Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD)

Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch, was regularly presented at the Kunstkring. But if the citizens of The Hague wished to see the recent work of Les Vingt, Toorop or Van Gogh, they could do so only at the Haagse Kunstkring.²⁵

Mesdag's life as chairman of Pulchri Studio seems to have revolved around tributes, gala dinners, tableaux-vivants, masked balls, birthday parties, wedding feasts and honours. Despite this social schedule he continued to be very active on Pulchri's behalf. At first the association had been housed in the Boterhuis on the Grote Markt; in 1861 it had moved into the Regentenzaal of the Hofje van Nieuwkoop at the end of the Prinsegracht, and in 1886, just before Mesdag became chairman, into premises of its own, complete with exhibition space, at Prinsegracht 57. However, Mesdag had even grander ideas in mind. In 1896 he proposed that the board of Pulchri acquire Lange Voorhout 15, the former residence of Minister Van Tienhoven. In actual fact, together with his brother Taco, Mesdag had advanced the funds with which to purchase property for the society. His proposal was accepted by acclamation. On 9 August 1900 Mesdag laid the first stone for the transformation of the splendid 18th-century building into a worthy seat for the Schilderkundig Genootschap. A year later the exhibition rooms were inaugurated.²⁶

The purchase of the property was made possible by the Mesdag brothers; the funds were raised by selling a number of paintings donated by members, and a financial contribution from Mesdag and his wife in the form of a gift and a loan. Johan Gram wrote enthusiastically about the Pulchri's new home: ‘Already the hallway leading to those bright, evenly lit rooms is cheerful and refreshing. As one enters, the spacious white marble vestibule puts one in a pleasant frame of mind, the large, well-lit cloakroom keeps one in the desired good humour, the white marble staircase with chased bronze railings and the charming glimpse into the cheerful garden prepare one more and more for what is coming. [...] Not only is the light on the walls even and mild, but also the oak cornices and domes above them, containing the lanterns, form, along with the dark red fabric of the walls, a harmonious ensemble,

25 See Ronald de Leeuw, et al., exhib. cat. Haagse Kunstkring: werk verzameld, The Hague (Haags Gemeentemuseum) 1977.

26 C.J.J. Stal, ‘Het Lange Voorhout 15 als huis van het schilderkundig genootschap Pulchri Studio,’ Pulchri 11 (1983), no. 5, pp. 3-5.

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fig. 7
Mesdag in Venetian costume, The Hague, Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD)

which is very much to the benefit of the displayed art works.’²⁷ In 1901 Mesdag became an honorary member of Pulchri, in 1906 the Hollandsche Teeken-Maatschappij followed suit, and in 1907 his chairmanship of Pulchri was converted to an honorary chairmanship. By the time he died in 1915, he had left an indelible mark on the artistic life of The Hague: monumental premises for Pulchri Studio on the Lange Voorhout, a unique panorama on the Zeestraat and a museum of rare quality on the Laan van Meerdervoort.

27 J. Gram, 's-Gravenhage voorheen en thans, The Hague 1905, pp. 120-21: ‘Reeds de gang naar die heldere, gelijkmatige lichtverspreidende zalen is opwekkend en verkwikkend. Stemt het wit marmeren, ruime voorportaal den binnentredende aangenaam, houdt de goed verlichte en groote vestiaire hem in de gewenschte goede luim, de wit marmeren trap met gedreven koperen leuning en het bekoorlijke kijkje daarnaast in den lachende tuin bereiden al meer en meer voor op hetgeen te wachten staat. [...] Niet alleen is 't vallen van 't licht op de wanden gelijkmatig en mild, maar de eikenhouten kroonlijsten en koepels daarboven, waarin de lantaarns gevat zijn, vormen met het donkerrood bekleedsel der vlakken een harmonieus geheel, hetwelk zeer ten bate van de tentoongestelde kunstwerken.’