Anton Mauve was born in Zaandam as the son of a Baptist preacher. It soon became evident that he wanted to become a painter. At the age of sixteen, he studied with the animal painter Pieter Frederik van Os. After finishing his training at Van Os' studio, he briefly continued his education with the renowned horse painter Wouterus Verschuur Sr.
Mauve spent many summers in the rural village Oosterbeek. Here, he met several members of the Hague School, like Willem Roelofs, Paul Gabriel and Gerard Bilders. Van Os' old-fashioned ideas were soon replaced by a new aesthetic based on painting out of doors (en plein air) and the personal impression of unadorned nature. However, Mauves paintings do not have the casualness that typifies the paintings of the other members of the Hague School, but are in general more thought over and more colourful.

In the 1860s the young Mauve frequently visited the picturesque fishing village of Scheveningen. Ten years later he settled in the nearby town of The Hague. Here, he encountered a congenial artistic climate and kindred spirits like Hendrik Willem Mesdag and the brothers Willem and Jacob Maris. In the 1870s Mauve worked mostly in the dunes near the Dekkersduin, where he had a wooden shed built that served him as a studio. Mauve often painted in Scheveningen, depicting the village's two faces: at one side the women selling fish and workhorses dragging flat-bottomed boats ashore, on the other hand elegant ladies and smartly dressed gentlemen on a horseback. This latter, more mundane character was something of an exception in Mauve's oeuvre, for he particularly made a name for himself as a painter of simple rural life.

Biography courtesy of Roughton Galleries, www.antiquesandfineart.com/roughton