3 October 2026 - 28 February 2027

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 as of 1880. 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 in Amsterdam, 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 Dutch artists 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.

‘Betzy Akersloot-Berg does not belong on the fringes of art history’, Minke Schat, director of Museum Panorama Mesdag says. ‘She was an artist who plotted her own course, with an immense appetite for work and an exceptional eye for the power of nature. The fact that we can show her art again in this particular museum is both an honour and a mission. Betzy’s story connects Norway and the Netherlands and Mesdag’s world with an outstanding artist who remained entirely true to herself.’

Top international works united for the first time
The exhibition brings together several exceptional loans from national, international museums and private collections for the first time. Highlights include a work by her teacher Otto Sinding, The Lofoten Islands, 1884, from Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Akersloot-Berg’s monumental After the Storm from the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm (Sweden) and the early, narrative painting (Imperial Flagship off the Island of Skoroya,1892) showing the arrival of Kaiser Wilhelm II at a whaling station from the Perspektivet Museum in Tromsø (Norway).

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. 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. Exhibitions at home and abroad gained her a place of her own in the field of painting around 1900. In addition to a special fascination for the sea and the coast, her work testifies to an artist who resolutely plotted her own course within the world of European art. Akersloot-Berg 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 was more than simply an exceptional talent: her work shows how, as a woman, she managed to overcome the conventions of her time and carve out a place for herself on the international art scene through large-scale seascapes and coastal views’, Marguerite Tuijn, Museum Panorama Mesdag’s guest curator, says.

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 it was as an ambitious and professionally working artist that Betzy Berg, not yet married, entered artistic circles in the Dutch city, 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).

Vlieland
Following her marriage to the Dutchman, Gooswinus Akersloot, 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.

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, and with the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. It has also been made possible by loans from several private collectors, the Hannemahuis in Harlingen, Museum het Behouden Huys on Terschelling, the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam and The Netherlands Royal Collections. Marguerite Tuijn is the exhibition’s guest curator.

Publication
The exhibition is accompanied by the richly illustrated monograph Betzy Akersloot-Berg. One of a kind, with a fresh exploration of her artistry, formation, travels, studio practice and importance. There are essays by, among others, guest curator Marguerite Tuijn, art historian Jenny Reynaerts, historian Sunny Jansen, Museum Panorama Mesdag and Museum Tromp’s Huys. The book, published by Waanders, is the first substantial study devoted to Akersloot-Berg.
ISBN: 9789462627260. Price € 35.00 Available in Dutch and English.

Public programme
To coincide with the exhibition, Museum Panorama Mesdag is organizing a programme of public lectures and tours, as well as an educational programme around Betzy Akersloot-Berg’s life and work.

The exhibition Betzy Akersloot-Berg. One of a kind runs from 3 October 2026 to 28 February 2027 at Museum Panorama Mesdag.

About Museum Panorama Mesdag
Museum Panorama Mesdag became a national museum (rijksmuseum) on 1 January 2026. The institution is an icon of The Hague, with Mesdag’s Panorama of Scheveningen as its crowning glory. It shows a selection from the outstanding personal collections of the artist couple Hendrik Willem Mesdag and Sientje Mesdag-van Houten, alongside exhibitions that link past and present in intriguing ways.

Biography Marguerite Tuijn
Marguerite Tuijn (1969) is an independent art historian specializing in Dutch art from around 1880 to 1970. She has curated numerous exhibitions devoted to Dutch artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Note for editors (not for publication) 
High-resolution press images are available via the website: Press Kit
To request an interview with the guest curator Marguerite Tuijn, additional information or visual material, please contact Caroline Rijks, Press and Communication Coordinator, pressoffice@panorama-mesdag.nl, Tel.: +31 (0)6-41253816. 

Left: Betzy Akersloot-Berg, Bird Rock at Gjesvaer, 1888, Museum Tromp’s Huys, Vlieland_Piet Gispen, The Hague
Right: Betzy Akersloot-Berg, Midnight Lofoten, Norway, undated, Museum Tromp’s Huys, Vlieland_Piet Gispen, The Hague

Left: Betzy Akersloot-Berg, After the Storm, 1905 or earlier, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Photo: Anna Danielsson / Nationalmuseum
Rigth: Betzy Akersloot-Berg, Marine Belle-Ile, 1907, Museum Tromp’s Huys, Vlieland, Piet Gispen, The Hague

Left: H.W. Mesdag, Choppy Sea, 1894, Museum Panorama Mesdag, The Hague_Piet Gispen, The Hague
Right: Otto Ludvig Sinding, The Lofoten, 1884, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Collection, Rotterdam. Gift from Dr. A.J. Domela Nieuwenhuis, Photography: Studio Tromp

Left: Betzy Akersloot-Berg, Imperial Yacht off the Coast of the Island of Skoroya, 15 juli /July1892, Perspektivet Museum, Tromsø, Norway_Photo MariHildung / Perspektivet Museum
Right: Betzy Akersloot-Berg, Seascape, undated, Private collection Van Terwisga_Piet Gispen, The Hague

Left: Betzy Akersloot-Berg, North Cape, 1892, Museum Tromp’s Huys, Vlieland_
Piet Gispen, The Hague
Right: Betzy Akersloot-Berg, Drowned Man on the Beach, Museum Tromp’s Huys, Vlieland_Piet Gispen, The Hague

Left: Betzy Akersloot-Berg, High Dune, Terschelling, 1896 or later, Museum Tromp’s Huys, Vlieland_Piet Gispen, The Hague
Right: Betzy Akersloot-Berg, Trum Sjö, Sea near Tromsø, undated, Museum Tromp’s Huys, Vlieland_Piet Gispen, The Hague

Left: Betzy Akersloot-Berg, Near Rome, 1921, Museum Tromp’s Huys, Vlieland_Piet Gispen, The Hague
Right: Betzy Akersloot-Berg, View of East Vlieland, 1896 or later , Museum Tromp’s Huys, Vlieland_Piet Gispen, The Hague

Left: Sientje Mesdag-van Houten, Portret van Betzy Berg, 1887, Museum Tromp’s Huys Vlieland_Piet Gispen, The Hague
Right: Studio portrait photo of Berg in a fur coat, undated, Museum Tromp’s Huys Vlieland  

Betzy Akersloot-Berg next to her painter’s box, 1896 or later, Museum Tromp’s Huys, Vlieland