Bospad 1886

This pencil drawing by Maria Vos captures a woodland path, or 'Bospad', likely created in the Netherlands around 1886. Vos's choice of subject matter speaks to the Romantic movement's reverence for nature, but it's also interesting to consider the institutional context. Vos was part of a generation of women artists who, though often excluded from formal academic training, found opportunities through alternative art schools and societies. The detailed rendering and the very act of sketching outdoors places Vos in a lineage of landscape artists seeking to capture the immediacy of their environment. The Rijksmuseum's collection helps us to place this work within a broader history of Dutch landscape art, and further archival research might reveal more about Vos's position within the artistic networks of her time, shedding light on the social conditions that shaped her artistic practice.