DOI Heft:
No. 129 (November, 1907)
DOI Artikel:Rutter, Frank: A consideration of the work of Anton Mauve
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.28253#0020
Anton Mauve
not longer in duration than those of any other
tourist for pleasure. He was no great traveller, for
his heart was in the lowlands. He loved the
country in which he was born and received his
training, and in that country he lived and worked.
His initial experiences were those of a hundred
other art-students. His father, a Baptist minister
at Haarlem, after the usual paternal misgivings,
permitted his son to enter the studio of Van Os
at Amsterdam. But Anton probably owed still
more to the unofficial guidance of his father’s
neighbour at Haarlem, Wouterus Verschuur (1812-
74), whose formal paintings of horses, akin in
style to Verboeckhoven’s sheep, are occasionally
to be met with in the collections of Holland. It
is difficult to say what Mauve gained from his
master save a good grounding in draughtsmanship,
and his nervous, impulsive temperament must often
have rebelled against the arid formalism of the
academic canons then in vogue. But Verschuur
undoubtedly awakened in him that deep affection
for and profound knowledge of the horse which
was subsequently to become one of the salient
features of his art.
From the first Mauve’s colour was entirely his
own. A bad habit, which he had in common
with too many other painters, of never dating his
pictures, renders it a little difficult to trace the
chronological sequence of his works. But in the
wonderful collection of the late Mr. Alexander
Young there is an oil painting which must belong
to a very early period in Mauve’s career, a view
Near Zaandam, taken it would appear from a care-
fully selected standpoint to avoid as much as
possible that forest of windmills in which the
painter was born, about which, probably on
account of its farni iarity, he was never enthusiastic.
The picture is rather tightly painted, but the
colour, though very dark, is decidedly personal,
with greens as rich and sombre as those of a very
early Monet. The sky is especially interesting,
not quite so luminous as Mauve’s skies afterwards
became, but fresh and clear in its prim, old-
fashioned style, with precise little clouds scudding
across the azure. It does not instantly take us
back to Nature, as Mauve’s later paintings do, but
it tells us very pleasantly that he has been looking at
Ruysdael, and helps to establish his family descent.
“PLOUGHING” (WA'l ER-COLOUR) ■ BY ANTON MAUVE
(By permission o f Messrs. Thos. Agnew Sons and Messrs. Wallis Sf Son)
4
not longer in duration than those of any other
tourist for pleasure. He was no great traveller, for
his heart was in the lowlands. He loved the
country in which he was born and received his
training, and in that country he lived and worked.
His initial experiences were those of a hundred
other art-students. His father, a Baptist minister
at Haarlem, after the usual paternal misgivings,
permitted his son to enter the studio of Van Os
at Amsterdam. But Anton probably owed still
more to the unofficial guidance of his father’s
neighbour at Haarlem, Wouterus Verschuur (1812-
74), whose formal paintings of horses, akin in
style to Verboeckhoven’s sheep, are occasionally
to be met with in the collections of Holland. It
is difficult to say what Mauve gained from his
master save a good grounding in draughtsmanship,
and his nervous, impulsive temperament must often
have rebelled against the arid formalism of the
academic canons then in vogue. But Verschuur
undoubtedly awakened in him that deep affection
for and profound knowledge of the horse which
was subsequently to become one of the salient
features of his art.
From the first Mauve’s colour was entirely his
own. A bad habit, which he had in common
with too many other painters, of never dating his
pictures, renders it a little difficult to trace the
chronological sequence of his works. But in the
wonderful collection of the late Mr. Alexander
Young there is an oil painting which must belong
to a very early period in Mauve’s career, a view
Near Zaandam, taken it would appear from a care-
fully selected standpoint to avoid as much as
possible that forest of windmills in which the
painter was born, about which, probably on
account of its farni iarity, he was never enthusiastic.
The picture is rather tightly painted, but the
colour, though very dark, is decidedly personal,
with greens as rich and sombre as those of a very
early Monet. The sky is especially interesting,
not quite so luminous as Mauve’s skies afterwards
became, but fresh and clear in its prim, old-
fashioned style, with precise little clouds scudding
across the azure. It does not instantly take us
back to Nature, as Mauve’s later paintings do, but
it tells us very pleasantly that he has been looking at
Ruysdael, and helps to establish his family descent.
“PLOUGHING” (WA'l ER-COLOUR) ■ BY ANTON MAUVE
(By permission o f Messrs. Thos. Agnew Sons and Messrs. Wallis Sf Son)
4