Anton Mauve

Dutch, 1838–1888

BiographyThe son of a Mennonite preacher, Anton Mauve was born in Zaandam on 18 September 1838. He spent his youth in Haarlem, where he was a pupil of the animal painter Pieter Frederik van Os (1808-1892) from about 1854 until 1857; he also studied with the painters Wouterus Verschuur and Paul Gabriël. Mauve settled in Amsterdam in 1865, and moved to The Hague in 1871. In 1874 he married Ariëtte Sophia Jeannette Carbentus, a cousin of Vincent van Gogh; van Gogh (1853-1890) studied briefly with Mauve in 1881-82. Together with Willem Maris (1844-1910) and Hendrik Mesdag (1831-1915), Mauve founded the Hollandsche Teeken-Maatschappij (Dutch Drawing Society) in 1876. These three artists--along with Jozef Israëls, Jacob Maris, and Johannes Bosboom (1817-1891)--were the leading figures in the Hague School of painting. Works by these artists, produced between about 1860 and 1900, are characterized by a romantic nostalgia for seventeenth-century Dutch painting, and a particular sensitivity for recording light and atmospheric effects. Mauve settled in Laren in 1885, and died on 5 February 1888 while on a visit to Arnhem.

Mauve was a brilliant technician in both oil and watercolor. Primarily a landscape painter, he is best known for his scenes of horses, cows, and sheep in the watery, flat Dutch landscape. Especially during his late Laren period, Mauve's figure paintings are profoundly influenced by the work of Jean François Millet.