Panorama Mesdag at the Hague

This circular painting of the town of Scheveningen as it was in 1880 consists of 8 panels each 35m in height and the whole panorama measuring 120m.  It was painted under the supervision of the Dutch painter Henrik Willem Mesdag and four other painters including his wife.  The panorama was completed in four months 1881.

It is the largest painting in The Netherlands and the only one to have a museum specially built for it's display.  Other panoramas were painted in the nineteenth century but the Panorama Mesdag is the oldest in the world and which is still displayed in it's original setting.

I can of course only show the columns in a linear fashion here on the page but standing there surrounded by the paintings on all sides is a great experience.

Panorama Guth was painted along the lines of Panorama Mesdag in Alice Springs by two Dutch painters.  Started in 1971 as a realistic Central Australian outback scene, it was completed in 1975.  This Australian panorama was painted on 33 pieces of canvas, each six metres high and arranged as a continuous circle of 20 metres in diameter with a central viewing platform in the middle.
Unfortunately, it was destroyed by fire in 2005.  Andrew had been there and saw the panorama at Alice.  He can now compare the two.

Here are two of the panels of the Panorama Mesdag in a closer view.

I have just been told the story of Scheveningen by a friend back in Australia that I had not heard.  Because it is so devilish to pronounce, during the WWII, the Germans got anyone they suspected of only pretending to be Dutch to pronounce the name of this town as only a born and bred Dutch person could do it properly by getting their tongue around it.  This of course applies to many Dutch words, giving substance tothe rumour that Dutch is not a language but rather, a throat disease.