Jacobus van Looy was born on 12 September 1855 in Haarlem as the son of a carpenter. His father lost his job when his eyesight began to fail. His mother passed away when he was five years old and when his father died soon afterwards, the young Jacobus ended up in the local orphanage. He trained to become a house painter, but was able to follow drawing classes from 1877 at the Rijksacademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. In 1884, Van Looy received the Prix de Rome, which allowed him to travel. The following two years, he spent traveling through Italy, Spain and Morocco. Until 1892 he lived in Amsterdam, when he married Titia van Gelder and moved to Soest. In 1901, they spent a year travelling through Spain and Morocco. In 1913, Van Looy moved back to Haarlem, the year the orphanage where he grew up was vacated and became the current location of the Frans Hals Museum.

Van Looy was a succesful author and editor of the prestigious De Nieuwe Gids. After he received a critical review for his art, he focused on his writing and only paint for personal pleasure. His wife’s well-to-do family supported the couple and acquired some of the most important works. The majority of his collection remained in the family, while his Haarlem home on the corner of the Haarlemmerhout Park was converted to a museum in his name after his death in 1930. It closed in 1976 and the collection was transferred to the Frans Hals Museum. The Teylers Museum in Haarlem holds Van Looys early drawings from his travels.

A group of works depicting mowers from the end of the nineteenth century, is very much indebted to Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) via Van Looy's contemporary Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). For Van Gogh, who copied Millet's mower in 1881, the farmer with his scythe would become a frequent protagonist as he was preoccupied with their plight. If Van Looy shared Van Gogh’s concern is unclear, but the symbolic meaning of the scythe (the mowing away of time and life) was close to his heart, judging from a drawing of Father Time in a landscape.

In the countryside surrounding the Van Looy's villa Zomerzorg in Soest, the meadows and hayfields became a source of inspiration for the artist. Every summer, Van Looy would watch the labor of the returning mowers, fascinated by their postures. The short, repeated swaying movements the workers inspired many works of art and literature. In January 1900, Van Looy published The Mower, describing in great detail the enterprise of the boy as he is cutting the grass.[1]

A mower in pastel in the collection of The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, can be dated to the summer of 1898, according to an old label on the mount. A double-sided preparatory black chalk drawing for the present mower of the same year is the Frans Halsmuseum, Haarlem.

[1] “De rechter-greep om het houten handvat aan de ‘korte dol’ waar de kracht is en de stuur, en die van de linker om den knoest met de stang van ijzer, aan de ‘lange dol’ waar de vlucht van komt en de zwier, wijdbeens aan 't staan, wrong hij zijn romp, vèr-reikend naar rechts en schaduw, zoodat zijn nek-haar zich gelijk richtte met de straffe spits van den stok.” Van Looy, Feesten VI [De maaier], in Tweemaandelijksch Tijdschrift, January 1900, 30, pp. 21-51