Morning Ride on the Beach

The Hague School painters of the 1870s mostly went to the beach at Scheveningen to paint the hard life of the fishing families there. Anton Mauve turned the other way and painted the leisured class instead, three well-off riders taking their horses down onto the morning sand past the wooden bathing cabins waiting for swimmers. He keeps the whole scene in a soft weave of blue and yellow, the light of an overcast Dutch coast. Mauve was a patient observer of animals and weather, and a few years after this he briefly took his young relative Vincent van Gogh in hand, giving him his first real lessons in painting before the two fell out. The riders are unhurried, already dressed for a day with nothing much to do.