Overlooking the sea from the dunes

After Mesdag and his wife Sientje returned from their stay on the island of Norderney in 1868, where Mesdag had made his first seastudies, he decided to devote himself to painting seascapes. The next year they moved to The Hague permanently and Mesdag started to work industriously. The present lot - which was executed in 1870 - can been seen as an early example within the oeuvre of the artist. His early work differes from his later works in the precise detailing, but already displays the fabulous way in which he turns the atmosphere of a windy day on the beach of Scheveningen with fisherfolk and Bomschuiten laying up against the dunes, into paint. Ten years later Mesdag received a commission to paint an enormous canvas of 1600 square meters on the Zeestraat in The Hague: the Panorama Mesdag. This circular panorama depicting the beach of Scheveningen from Seinpostduin shows obvious similarities with the present lot in that the beach and sea can be seen from a vantage point in the dunes. Today, the Panorama Mesdag is one the most frequently visited attractions in The Hague.