Studie van de wortels van een boom by Anton Mauve

Studie van de wortels van een boom 1848 - 1888

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drawing, pencil

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tree

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drawing

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impressionism

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pencil sketch

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landscape

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form

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pencil

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realism

Dimensions: height 283 mm, width 458 mm

Copyright: Rijks Museum: Open Domain

Editor: We’re looking at "Studie van de wortels van een boom," or "Study of Tree Roots," a pencil drawing by Anton Mauve, created sometime between 1848 and 1888. It's housed here at the Rijksmuseum. It’s so understated. What’s compelling to you about this relatively simple drawing? Curator: For me, it's about seeing the physical evidence of the artist’s labor and the cultural context of his choices. We see Mauve meticulously building form with pencil. He is deliberately depicting a section of the tree, a base where the raw material of the wood begins its relationship with the earth. What kind of paper did he choose, how did the pencil drag or skip along its surface? These choices reveal a certain understanding and manipulation of his immediate environment, and of the art market itself. Editor: So you're seeing his selection of pencil and paper, and his specific rendering of this subject as something that ties directly into, say, market demands of the period? Curator: Precisely. Ask yourself what pressures might have led an artist to focus on such a specific, almost mundane subject. Think about industrialization; about access to new materials and tools in that era. Art exists within a complex web of material conditions. This wasn't simply about a tree root but Mauve's *means* to create the tree root and put it up for sale. Editor: That's a way of looking at it that I hadn't considered. Seeing it less as observation and more as production. I am interested in exploring how art, even landscape art, participates in material consumption. Thanks for pointing that out. Curator: Indeed, understanding the historical means of artistic production offers us a fascinating lens into understanding culture at large.

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