Painting Lot A-81005
Cor Wouter Bouter (1888 – 1966)
Woodman in forest

Oil on canvas, 70 x 100 cm

Painting

In this piece of art, three loggers are lumbering accompanied by their horses and cart. Clearly, they are working in the Dutch woods as the painting shows these large beeches typical for the Dutch forest. The painting has special beautiful autumn colors. The painting is signed at the bottom left.

This painting belongs to The Hague School style of paintings, a style drifting away from romanticism towards a realistic style of painting. The Hague School was introduced by a group of artists who lived and worked in the city of The Hague between 1860 and 1890. The Hague School was a style who resisted against Romanticism of the mid 19th century. The Hague School was ‘a new way of seeing and depicting things, intent to convey mood, tone takes precedence over color’. The Hague School characterized by its gray mood and bad weather effects. That is why the Hague School is also called the “Gray School”. The painting is framed by a beautiful hand painted, early 20th-century gold colored frame.

Painter

Cor Wouter Bouter is a famous Dutch painter that belongs to The Hague School. For Bouter painting was a profession, necessary to earn a living for his family. Bouter is famous for his interior paintings and landscapes with horses and cows. His work was sold well and there was a great demand before the Second World War, in North America and Canada. There, he used several pseudonyms like C. Hendriks, C. Verschuur and C. Willems. He is included in the National Art History Documentation Center (RKD) in the Netherlands, in the Lexicon Dutch Visual Artists 1750 – 1950′ by Pieter A. Scheen, and in the database of the ‘Documentation of Fine Arts’ in South-Holland.