Anton Mauve

“many free images of Mauve's paintings in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam”

“biographical facts of Anton Mauve, at the Dutch R.K.D. Archive, The Hague”

“sometimes they went away [the cows in Oosterbeek] before he started and sometimes [they were] so quiet and unmovable that he had to shout to start them moving, otherwise his conscience wouldn't allow him to declare the study as finished. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek)”

“Studio in the Miss Idastraat [in The Hague]. - Now you must not think that our studio [of Willem Maris, Mauve and other artists, 1860's] was so special. It was on the sunny side - and we had to deal with only a second window that you opened and closed according to whether it was sunny or cloudy. A gymnastics master lived below. There his pupils were practicing diligently on the rings: bòns, bòns. And above us lived a ... trombonist. Then Mauve sometimes, mad with anger, stood pounding his painting-stick against the floor and attic: 'You will stop now at last!' (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek)”

“It was not the cart as such but a part of life itself that he saw in that image. It was probably more the swinging and thumping trip of such a cart, the grinding of the wheels and the sliding out on the axles, the slow, cozy, quiet going forward, with the wandering old man aside and the loom trudging horse in front of the cart. Not a cart with a horse, but how such a clump of reality was lugging along the road as an intimately coherent something, the unity in that moving forward and the poetic quietness that he felt in it; that's what he wanted to express. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek)”

“..the [art-]dealers were constantly demanding more, so that Mauve would sometimes jestingly speak of his studio as 'the Great Factory'..”

“[Loffelt tells how Mauve, c. 1880] studied with full attention and sympathy [the work of] Millet in an extensive collection of photographic images [of Millet's work] that belonged to his house gods. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek)”

“Whoever knew Mauve closely knows how much time he spent on such paintings; how many walks and studies were needed to renew his impression and to settle it, and how difficult he decided to separate himself from such a canvas, even so strongly that, when the canvas was carried out of his house, he still kept working on it in the hallway. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek)”

“Many times - sometimes in the middle of a conversation - he stopped walking, to attach in one single pull something that struck him outdoors on the paper: a tree, a ditch, a cloudy shadow, the position of a sheep or cow. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek)”

“But Mauve is not dead! When we walk in those pretty country lanes under the birch trees, with their silvery leaves and pearly aspect; when we watch the sun caressing the green meadows and playing about among the branches of the willow, or over the alder and hazel trees; when we hear the echo of the tinkling bell of the sheep on the heath, we say: 'Mauve lives, he is here, he is here!'”

“..the true quiet nature [of] Laren, that was where he believed to be able to live fresh.. .His health improved a lot. Perhaps because the work was bowling along or it was the air of Laren, I don't know. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek)”

“Anton has gone again through a period of nerve weakness.. ..he had no rest at all or I had to be with him, walking a lot and talking all the time, but try to comfort and especially look like a happy person.. ..but the worst is over now and this morning he was calm again on a great walk we made together, and he felt such a strong feeling of happiness and gratitude. You can't believe how childlike he can be then and how delighted he can enjoy life.. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek)”

“..it's a pity that he [Anton Mauve] is so limited, he was here Sunday and Monday and I talked to him a lot, I think he is a bit of a week; very sensitive, a warm man, but so simple and round. Yet I thought he was even more limited, he admitted that direction [in painting] is nonsense and that everything depends on personality; he strongly advised me to paint many large figures in open air; don't talk about it to anyone: it's nobody's business.. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek)”

“Because I had started [his sketch in oil, in the dunes] before the storm on my knees with a low horizon, I now had to kneel down in the mud.. .The outcome this time was that I was able to take that piece of ground with me to the studio — although Mauve rightly said to me when we were discussing one of his studies that it's a job to draw clods of earth and to get depth into them.”

“I spent an afternoon and part of an evening at Mauve’s and saw many beautiful things in his studio. My own drawings interested Mauve more. He gave me a great many suggestions, which I'm glad of, and I've sort of arranged to pay him another visit fairly soon when I have some more studies. He showed me a whole batch of his studies and explained them to me - not sketches for drawings or designs for paintings but true study sheets, apparently insignificant. He wants me to start painting.”

“You go outside, light your pipe, whistle a tune and just paint what you come across. (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“Hereby I send you back the 'Winter' [a painting]. I hope you will be better satisfied now. After alternately smashing away and adding on the cart some new figures, finally this one climbed up, which I hope will do better than its predecessors.. (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“Just follow the lead of the Dutch seventeenth-century master-painters, we have to look at the country around us in the way the old masters did. (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“When entering a studio the most pleasant thing to see is a blank canvas. It looks so inviting to make a start, you are fresh and hoping for the best. Then a terrible time follows when everything seems lost and ruined, you fear you will never get it done, than suddenly a ray of light! And it seems you get what you wanted to tell. My best works usually are going trough such a struggle. (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“All my canvases I paint after sketches. (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”