Anton Mauve

Anthonij (Anton) Rudolf Mauve (18 September 1838 – 5 February 1888) was a Dutch realist painter who was a leading member of the Hague School. He signed his paintings ‘A. Mauve’ or with a monogrammed ‘A.M.’. A master colorist, he was a very significant early influence on his cousin-in-law Vincent van Gogh. Most of Mauve’s work depicts people and animals in outdoor settings. In his Morning Ride in the Rijksmuseum, for example, fashionable equestrians at the seacoast are seen riding away from the viewer. An unconventional detail, horse droppings in the foreground, attests his commitment to realism. His best known paintings depict peasants working in the fields.

In 1872, Mauve settled in The Hague where he became a leading member of the Hague School of painters and one of the founders of the Hollandsche Teekenmaatschappij in 1876, as well as playing a leading role in the development of the Pulchri Studio, The Hague’s most influential art society at the time. In the last two years of his life, Mauve settled in the village of Laren in the region surrounding Hilversum called het Gooi. The group of painters who settled there, including Jozef Israëls and Albert Neuhuys, came to be known collectively as the Larense School and the region around het Gooi was dubbed ‘Mauve land’ as far afield as the United States. Mauve will have influenced many other painters one of whom was the Scottish painter, Robert McGregor (1847-1922).