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A Dutch Road

A Dutch Road

Artist: Anton Mauve (Dutch, 1838-1888)
Date: about 1880
Dimensions:
20 × 14 1/2 in. (50.8 × 36.8 cm)
Medium: oil on canvas
Place of Origin: Netherlands
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Gift of Arthur J. Secor
Object number: 1922.22
Label Text:Led by Anton Mauve, the group of Dutch painters known as the Hague School distinguished itself by its exceptional rendering of moody atmospheric effects. As a Dutch critic wrote in 1875, “The artists try, by preference, to render mood; and they give precedence to tone above color…. They have revealed the poetry of gray in a hitherto unprecedented manner.”

Mauve’s A Dutch Road reveals his characteristic “poetry of gray” and his debt to the great Dutch 17th-century masters of landscape. Finding inspiration in what he considered the heroic aspects of everyday life, Mauve, along with other 19th-century artists like Jules Breton (see The Shepherd’s Star, this gallery), tried to depict nature and the “simple life” that was being swept away by the Industrial Revolution and rapid urbanization.


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In Collection(s)