Donkey Stand on the Beach at Scheveningen

Scheveningen in the 1870s was two things at once, a working fishing village and the beach where The Hague came to bathe. What Mauve picked out of it was a piece of the visitors' trade: the stand where the donkeys waited to take children along the sand for a few cents. Hague School painters came out here for the sea and the grey light, and some of them, Mauve among them, also recorded the small business going on at the water's edge. The fishing side of the beach did get into this picture first. On the left he laid in a couple of boats, then changed his mind and painted them out. Their contours still show faintly through the paint above them.