Jonge vrouw met sprokkelhout onder de arm in een bos 1854 - 1914

Albert Neuhuys made this charcoal drawing of a young woman gathering firewood, likely during the late 19th century. The woman is set within a sparse copse of trees and is a study of rural life in the Netherlands at this time. Neuhuys belonged to the Hague School, a group of Dutch artists who were painting at a time of significant social change. Many people were leaving the countryside to seek work in the cities, and the Hague School artists captured the realities of rural life, often focusing on the lives of peasants and laborers. Neuhuys and his contemporaries created a visual record of a traditional way of life that was under threat. Looking at archives of images and economic records from the time, we can begin to understand not only the social conditions that shaped Neuhuys’s art but also what function it served. The artist’s decision to depict this subject, a rural worker, reflects the cultural anxieties surrounding modernisation and the idealization of rural life that was so persistent at this time.