Anton Mauve

In the winter of 1881 a difficult, self-taught 28-year-old turned up at the studio of a successful Dutch painter in The Hague, wanting to learn. The painter was Anton Mauve, a leading figure of the Hague School and known for tender grey landscapes of sheep, shepherds and misty polders. The pupil was his wife's cousin, Vincent van Gogh.

Mauve put a brush and a box of watercolours in Van Gogh's hands and gave him his first real lessons in painting. It did not last. The two men quarrelled within months, partly over Vincent's chaotic private life, and never fully repaired it.

Mauve kept painting his quiet, silvery scenes and became one of the most admired Dutch artists of his day. When he died suddenly in 1888, Van Gogh, by then in Arles, was working on a delicate canvas of a blossoming peach tree. He inscribed it to his old teacher, Souvenir de Mauve, and sent it to Mauve's widow.