I went to the Panorama Mesdag in Den Haag (The Hague) today.

It’s so beautiful. I think I stared a good hour at the painting. Can I still call it a painting? It’s a round painting. It stands a good 14 meters away from where you’re standing on a artificial platform that looks like a beach hut. They also made a huge hill out of real sand and made it look like a real beach (with nets and chairs and shoes lying about) that goes on for 14 meters or so.
Then the real sand seems to disappear and you see the painting.

Also there’s a sound loop of birds and you hear the sea crashing and it feels so real it’s amazing (though they also had some information on a 10 minute loop or something and that got a bit annoying after the 8th time you heard it or so)

It shows the coast and Den Haag and Scheveningen as they were in 1881, it’s 14 meters high and around 120 meter in width (!). Hendrik Willem Mesdag, his wife, and some other dudes also painted it in less than 4 months. That’s just a blow to your artistic pride right there.

It was prohibited to take pictures (hahaha, I saw some guy filming there and just winked at him, while trying to hide my own camera in my bag XD) so here’s something from youtube instead.

Anyway. This is a shitty youtube copy of it. It’s the only one I can find that doesn’t have interviews or the rest of the museum in the video. Since I don’t care about those, I chose this one.

If you’re ever in Den Haag, I recommend you to visit it!