A Dutch Road
Anton Mauve
ANTON MAUVE, 1880. OIL ON CANVAS.
Artists strive to capture different things. Form, color, emotion, the impression of a place - each new movement that comes searches for something different, places importance on elements hereto under explored. A group of Dutch painters in the late 19th century, known as the Hague school, were concerned above all with the mood of a scene. Accuracy, feeling, form, these were secondary characteristics in their mind. Unlike the impressionists, working at a similar time, who wanted to capture the impression of a place, in loose feeling and memory hazed depiction, the Hague School wanted to explore the pervading emotion not of the painter but of the environment in totality. Here, Anton Mauve, the de-facto leader of the group, captures a sombreness, a moody atmosphere heavy with the morose, not defeatist but quiet and weary. He creates poetry with his shades of grey that seem to hang over every element of the scene. It is not so much a portrait of a landscape, and a portrait of the weight that sits heavy on us all.