Old Drenthe Woman

Drenthe in the early 1880s was the poorest and emptiest province in the Netherlands, a country of heath, bog and hand-cut peat with almost no industry to speak of. That is part of why Dutch painters started going there. Van Rappard lived in Utrecht and travelled up in the summers, working around Rolde, Noordsleen and Coevorden, and painting the villagers he found in their own homes and yards, the old and the very poor among them. This study of an old Drenthe woman comes out of those visits, and the museum dates it to 1882 or 1883. It is oil on canvas laid down on panel, sizeable for something made away from the studio, about 90 centimetres high and 50 wide. Writing from Rolde in September 1883, he called the landscape around him very serious in mood.