Watchdogs
Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps (1803 - 1860), c. 1829
oil on canvas, 98 cm x 130.5 cm
Credits: The Mesdag Collection, The Hague
The watchdogs in this monumental painting are almost life size. It is as though they are right in front of you. Decamps rendered the animals in great detail. Notice their bristly coats, and the white dog’s panting mouth. They seem so close by because the farm in the background is small and sketchily depicted.
Mesdag already owned two paintings by Decamps when he bought this animal portrait in 1888. He hung it on the second floor of his recently opened museum.
- Object number
- hwm0110
- Dimensions
- 98 cm x 130.5 cm, 141 cm x 170 cm, 20 cm
- Provenance
- Sold by E.J. van Wisselingh & Co, The Hague, to Hendrik Willem Mesdag, The Hague for NLG 4500, 4 February 1888; Collection Museum Mesdag donated by Hendrik Willem Mesdag and Sientje Mesdag-van Houten to the State of the Netherlands, 14 May 1903; Rijksmuseum H.W. Mesdag, The Hague, from 1 August 1903; in trust of the Mauritshuis, The Hague, between 1934 and 1990; in trust of the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam, from 1 April 1990; Museum Mesdag, in trust of the Van Gogh Museum Foundation, Amsterdam, from 1 July 1994, under the name of De Mesdag Collectie from 2011.
- artist
- Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps
- Credits
- The Mesdag Collection, The Hague
Dijk, Maite van, Suijver, Renske, Fitski, M., Smits, C., De Mesdag Collectie, Amsterdam, 2011, p. 37, 46
Dijk, Maite van, Suijver, Renske, Fitski, M., Smits, C., The Mesdag Collection, Amsterdam, 2011, p. 37, 46
Vergeest, Aukje, The French collection : nineteenth-century French paintings in Dutch public collections, Amsterdam, 2000, p. 134
Bodt, Saskia de, Leeman, Fred, Leeuw, Ronald de, Pennock, Hanna, Museum Mesdag : catalogue of paintings and drawings, Zwolle, 1996, p. 57, 179-177