Fishing Boats on the Shore

Hendrik Willem Mesdag became internationally known as a painter of seascapes. This canvas is one of the rare works that shows Mesdag’s love for fishing boats, fishermen’s lives and the sea in its various shades of grey. The Mesdag residence in Brussels was a meeting place for Belgian and Dutch artists. The Mesdags collected Barbizon School paintings and other French, Dutch and Belgian works. In 1887, the couple commissioned a house in The Hague with quarters large enough to hold their assorted artworks. The site is now known as the Mesdag Collection.