Anton Mauve, 'Milking Time', about 1875

Anton Mauve was dedicated to portraying as truthfully as possible the daily lives of people in his homeland, the Netherlands.

The woman in this painting is wearing a traditional Dutch cap and clogs. Her sleeves are rolled up and her arm is outstretched to compensate for the weight of the bucket she is carrying. However, the bucket must be empty, as she has not yet started to milk the cows. Mauve’s sombre palette and flashes of light were influenced by Dutch seventeenth-century painting but also by the French Barbizon School. According to Mauve’s granddaughter, Mrs E. von Brunner, this is a scene on the dunes near The Hague painted after 1870, possibly after his marriage in 1875.

In 1872 Mauve joined the art colony in the coastal Dutch town of The Hague. Artists such as Mauve, Jozef Israëls and Willem Maris moved to the region to paint outdoors. They particularly wanted to capture the fleeting atmosphere and emotions of changing weather effects. They were attracted to the muted colours that they found in the landscape around The Hague, and are sometimes known as the Grey School. Mauve and his friends were also determined to show what they felt to be a simpler way of life that was being swept away by the Industrial Revolution. His subject matter, therefore, often related to people working on farms. His earliest instruction in painting had been related to the depiction of animals and these remained a common feature in his work.

Ariëtte Carbentus, Mauve’s wife, was the cousin of Vincent van Gogh. In 1881 Van Gogh spent some time with Mauve. In his letters to his brother Theo, Van Gogh had often written positively about Mauve. Mauve allowed Vincent to work in his studio and instructed him in painting methods. Prior to this, Van Gogh had mainly been focused on drawing. In 1882 they had a quarrel and Mauve refused to remain in contact with Van Gogh. The cause of the quarrel is not certain, but it may have resulted from Van Gogh’s friendship with a pregnant sex worker, Clasina Maria Hoornik. Van Gogh continued to praise Mauve’s works, and the latter’s influence can be seen in some of his earliest oils such as The Potato Eaters (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam). Also, his paintings of peasants sometimes use a dark and sombre palette and show women in caps similar to the one worn by the woman in Mauve’s work.

In 1888 Mauve died unexpectedly of a stroke aged only 50. Van Gogh dedicated his painting Pink Peach Trees (‘Souvenir de Mauve’) (Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo) to the deceased artist and wrote to his brother that he intended to send it to Mauve’s widow on behalf of the Van Gogh family.