Hendrik Willem Mesdag

Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1831–1915), Dutch painter. He was the leading marine painter of the Hague School, and his style to some extent returned to 17th-century Dutch traditions. In 1881 Mesdag painted a vast panorama, 120 m (395 ft) in circumference, of the fishing village of Scheveningen, which is housed in a building especially designed for the painting in The Hague.

Mesdag was a banker until he was 35, when he took up art and studied under English painter Lawrence Alma-Tadema in Brussels. Mesdag made an important collection of paintings, mostly in the styles of the Barbizon and Hague schools, now housed in the Mesdag Museum, The Hague.