Homeward Bound

This small panel changed hands twice in ten days. On 16 September 1881 Mauve sold it to the Hague branch of Goupil and Company, an international art firm, for 250 guilders. On 26 September the firm passed it on to Hendrik Willem Mesdag for 600 guilders, more than double what the painter had been paid. Mesdag was a painter himself, known for his North Sea views, and he bought steadily from the colleagues he saw every week in The Hague. Going home at the end of the working day was one of Mauve's recurring subjects, and it sold. In 1903 Mesdag and his wife, the painter Sientje Mesdag-van Houten, gave their whole collection to the Dutch state, and it is still shown in the gallery he had built beside his house on Laan van Meerdervoort.