Sina Mesdag-van Houten: life and works

Sina (Sientje) van Houten (23 December 1834 Groningen – 20 March 1909 The Hague) was the wife of Hendrik Willem Mesdag, the Dutch marine painter of the Hague School, and a painter herself.

She was the eldest of seven kids of Derk van Houten and Barbara Elisabeth Meihuizen. One of her brothers was later Minister Samuel van Houten. Her daddy had a large sawmill on the Damsterdiep. She married Mesdag upon 23 April 1856.

Sientje was a mighty moral withhold to her husband, especially later she vivaciously supported him in 1866, when he gave up his concern profession solely for painting. She began to paint in 1871, after she in limbo her only child, the 8-year-old Klaas. Gerkens Arnaud helped her drawing, while her painting was aided by her husband and her cousin Lawrence Alma-Tadema. She specialized in landscapes and nevertheless lifes, but in addition to painted portraits.

In 1874, together similar to Gerardina Jacoba van de Sande Bakhuyzen, Kate Bisschop-Swift and Margaretha Roosenboom, she painted “Hague orphans”, a painting for the after that Queen Sophie upon the occasion of the 25-years royal jubilee of her husband, King Willem III.

In 1881 she took portion in painting the Panorama Mesdag. As she worked, her husband painted her portrait, working upon the panorama, and in the panorama itself she is portrayed sitting astern her easel.

In 1884, one of her landscapes won a gold medal in Amsterdam she acknowledged a bronze medal in Paris for a heath landscape. In Melbourne, her performance also time-honored a bronze medal. She exhibited her statute at the Palace of Fine Arts at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. When Sientje Mesdag was 70 years, in 1905, she had an honorary exhibition in the halls of the Pulchri Studio.

Her acquit yourself has been exhibited in numerous countries, including Australia, Belgium, England, France, Italy, Austria and the US. On 21 December 1904 she was named Officer in the Order of Oranje-Nassau. In 1906 the Mesdag-Van Houten couple much-admired their golden anniversary. She died in the Hague, on 20 March 1909. She is buried in the Oud Eik en Duinen cemetery. He husband was furthermore buried there in 1915. In 1930 her brother Samuel was laid in the same grave. Work by Van Houten is found in the collections of the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Panorama Mesdag, the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, the Groningen Museum, the Drents Museum in Assen, the Fraeylemaborg in Slochteren, the Museum Lambert van Meerten [nl] in Delft and the Mesdag Collection.

Media joined to Sina Mesdag-van Houten at Wikimedia Commons