Farmyard

During the eighties and nineties of the previous century, Taco Mesdag (1829-1902) and his wife Gesina van Calcar-van Houten (1851-1936) owned a small country house in Vries in the province of Drenthe. It is most likely that the couple bought the pied-à-terre after moving from Groningen to The Hague in 1882. The country house, which bore the name of Rezzago, was a popular meeting place for the nucleus of the Hague School, with both A. Mauve and P.J.C. Gabriël visiting the idyllic spot on various occasions. Mauve probably exchanged The Hague for the extensive heathlands of Drenthe in the hope of painting flocks of sheep in a natural and unspoilt environment. The latter becoming more and more difficult in the vicinity of The Hague. An interesting testimony to this period of Anton Mauve's life forms the artist's view of Vries (Museum Mesdag, The Hague). This picture portrays his host Taco Mesdag, seated on a stool with painting utensils. Together with Sientje Mesdag-van Houten, whose early paintings of Drenthe already date from 1873, Taco Mesdag belongs to those members of the painter's family who worked there the most frequently. By the time Taco bought Rezzago in 1882, Hendrik Willem Mesdag had already established himself as a marine painter and therefore seldom used Drenthe as a subject for his work. The painter did however occasionally work in Drenthe during the seventies, producing delicate sketches and watercolours of sheepfolds, country boroughs and landscapes. Except for two examples in the collection of the Panorama Mesdag Museum in The Hague and The Teylers Museum in Haarlem, the majority of these impressions belong to private collections. Given the fact that the present lot was obtained directly from the premises of Rezzago, one can assume that H.W. Mesdag painted the work during a visit to his older brother after 1882. Farmyard thus constitues a rare feature in the oeuvre of H.W. Mesdag and represents the artist's link with the rural, and by The Hague School much frequented, province of Drenthe.

For recent literature on the subject see:
S. de Bodt, De Haagse School in Drenthe, Zwolle 1997.

Recorded in the archives of the Stichting Mesdag Documentatie, Wassenaar, inv.no. 2041.25.