Lièvre mort

Mondrian was 19 when he painted this hare, and it is one of the first works in his catalogue raisonne, so very close to the beginning of everything. In 1891 he was training for the drawing certificates that would let him teach, which he took in 1892 and 1893, and which were his father's idea. His father ran a Calvinist primary school. The painting lessons came instead from an uncle, Frits Mondriaan, who worked in the sober grey manner of the Hague School. A shot hare strung up by its legs was not a strange thing for a Dutch teenager to attempt. The hunting still life had been a stock subject in the Netherlands for well over two centuries, and drawing classes still ran their pupils through it. The canvas is 80 centimetres tall and hangs in The Hague, where the museum holds more of his work than anywhere else.