De moestuin 

Anton Mauve created this oil painting, called ‘De moestuin’—or ‘The Vegetable Garden’—likely in the 1870s or 80s, during the heyday of the Hague School. Mauve belonged to a group of Dutch artists who turned away from the grand, historical subjects that dominated European academies. Instead, they focused on humble, everyday scenes. Here, we see a woman working in a rural garden, surrounded by foliage and domestic fowl. The work’s muted tones reflect the artists’ interest in capturing the atmosphere of the Dutch landscape. The Hague School artists were deeply influenced by the Barbizon School in France, who similarly rejected academic conventions and painted en plein air—that is, out of doors—but they were also responding to specifically Dutch social and economic conditions. As the Netherlands industrialized, many artists felt a need to represent the disappearing rural way of life. To understand Mauve’s painting better, we might look at agricultural histories of the Netherlands, or studies of Dutch landscape painting. Art, after all, always exists in a social and historical context.