This is the house of Hendriks Willem Mesdag, the artist, which, with all its Barbizon treasures, with noble generosity he has made over to the nation in his lifetime.

Mesdag, who is himself one of the first of living Dutch painters, has been acquiring pictures for many years, and his collection, by representing in every example the taste of a single connoisseur, has thus the additional interest of unity.

Mesdag's own paintings are mostly of the sea--a grey sea with a few fishing boats, very true, very quiet and simple.

How many times he and James Maris painted Scheveningen's shore probably no one could compute.

His best-known work is probably the poster advertising the Harwich and Hook-of-Holland route, in which the two ports are joined by a chain crossing a grey sea--best known, because every one has seen this picture: it is at all the stations; although few, I imagine, have connected with it the name and fame of the Dutch artist and patron of the arts.
In the description of the Ryks collection at Amsterdam I shall say something about the pleasure of choosing one's own particular picture from a gallery.