“Stormy weather over a field.”
Another good week just ended. I finally took a weekend off. Off from work, off from painting and off from cycling. Just relaxing and recharging the batteries. So we went for few days to Rotterdam. Spent few days in and around Rotterdam and one day in the Hague; a beautiful town. We had a great time in the Hague, found a nice little cake shop owned by a Romanian confectioner. Lovely place, great atmosphere and tasty cakes; the place is called Lavinia Cakes’n Buttons.
We also visited a museum, which we liked a lot, The Mesdag Collection (De Mesdag Collectie). The museum was created by the famous Dutch painter Hendrik Willem Mesdag. He was a great plein air painter, his favourite subject being the seascape, with or without ships; mostly he painted aroud Scheveningen, bear the Hague. His wife was also a painter, mainly doing still life and animals. They painted together, with few other helpers a big panorama of Scheveningen, on a circular painting measuring about 120 meters in circumference and 14 meters high – was painted in four months. This is a must place to visit while in Hague. The museum was also great and we learnt a lot about H. W. Mesdag. He was a big art lover and collected plenty of art works. His favourite subject to buy was sketches and unfinished paintings, because he liked more the roughness of unfinished paintings. Towards the end of his life he donated everything to the state.
For the weekly painting I did another plein air, at a field near Cranborne (again).
Because of the stormy weather I had to work quickly, alla prima (wet on wet). I painted it on board. Used fewer colours than usual and no medium. I managed to complete the painting in few hours and than, added some finishing touches at home, to the sky and the yellow rape field.
So, here it is:
“Stormy weather over a field.”
Oil on board.
30 X 40cm (12” X 16”).
