Rediscovery
Betzy Akersloot-Berg was highly regarded during her lifetime in both Norway and the Netherlands. The first glowing reviews of her work and her contribution to international exhibitions began to appear in the 1880s.
She was represented in Paris in 1889 at both the Salon and the World Exhibition and in Amsterdam that same year at the Exhibition of Living Masters. The latter event, held on the Damrak, earned her the effusive praise of the Dutch press. A review in the Algemeen Handelsblad on 29 September 1889 went so far as to name her in the same breath as Hendrik Willem Mesdag and Sientje Mesdag-van Houten.
All the same, like many artists of her time, she gradually faded from the collective art-historical memory. Betzy Akersloot-Berg. One of a kind draws attention to her work once again and offers her the recognition she deserves.
Plotting her own course
Betzy Akersloot-Berg was one of the most individual artists of her time. In an era when women were all but barred from academies of art, she travelled independently across Norway and Europe to enable her to develop as an artist.
She worked in Oslo, Munich, Paris and The Hague, among others, visited international exhibitions and built up a professional artistic practice. Unconventional choices, travel and the sea were a thread that would run throughout her life. In the course of her travels, she studied the interaction between light, air and water. Critics praised her powerful brushwork, her sense of atmosphere and her choice of seascape – a genre dominated by men at the time.
In addition to a special fascination for the sea and the coast, her work is testimony to an artist who resolutely plotted her own course within the world of European art. Betzy was a successful businesswoman too; one of the first artists in the Netherlands to copyright her work, she consciously developed an international reputation by presenting Norwegian coastal views in the Netherlands and scenes of the Dutch coast in Norway.
Betzy Akersloot-Berg, Village, Vlieland (reverse side), 1896 or later, private collection. Photo: Piet Gispen Photography, The Hague.
Close friendship with the Mesdags
Betzy Berg first saw the work of the famous Dutch marine artist Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1831–1915) at an international exhibition in Vienna in 1882. His seascapes made a profound impression on her and were a key reason for her move to The Hague a few years later. Recent research shows that she did not arrive there as an emerging talent, but as an already established and ambitious artist, which casts fresh light on her relationship with the Mesdags and her position in the world of art in The Hague. She sought Mesdag out to seek his artistic advice and to immerse herself further in maritime painting, forming a close bond with Hendrik Willem and his wife Sientje Mesdag-van Houten (1834–1909).
H.W. Mesdag, Rough Sea, 1894, Museum Panorama Mesdag, Piet Gispen Photography, The Hague.
Vlieland
Following her marriage to the Dutchman, Akersloot-Berg eventually made her artistic home on the island of Vlieland. She worked for decades from her home – now Museum Tromp’s Huys – on an impressive body of work, centring on the sea, the coast and their ephemeral weather. The island became a lasting inspiration within her artistic practice and the base for her ongoing travel around Europe.
Betzy Akersloot-Berg, View of Oost-Vlieland, 1896 or later, Collection of Museum Tromp’s Huys, Vlieland. Photo: Piet Gispen Photography, The Hague.
International collaboration
The exhibition has been organized in close collaboration with Museum Tromp’s Huys on Vlieland, which oversees the world’s largest collection of Akersloot-Berg’s work, with the Norwegian museums Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum and Perspektivet Museum in Tromsø (Norway), and with the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm (Sweden).
It has also been made possible by loans from several private collectors, the Museum Hannemahuis (Harlingen), Museum het Behouden Huys (Terschelling), the Frans Hals Museum (Haarlem), Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (Rotterdam), and The Royal Collections of the Netherlands and The Mesdag Collection (The Hague). Marguerite Tuijn is the exhibition’s guest curator.
