Anton Mauve was a key figure in late 19th-century Dutch painting, and his characteristic depictions of sheep being herded in the sandy landscape of the Gooi region, to the south east of Amsterdam, more or less created an independent genre of painting. As Robert-Jan te Rijdt has kindly informed us, Mauve sold many works to British, American and Canadian collectors in the 1880s and 1890s, with whom it seems his images, like this, of 'sheep coming' were rather more popular than his 'sheep going'.