Jacob Maris

130
Jacob Maris bigraphy, stories - Dutch painter

Jacob Maris : biography

August 25, 1837 – August 7, 1899

Jacob Maris (August 25, 1837, The Hague – August 7, 1899, Karlsbad) was a Dutch painter, who with his brothers Willem and Matthijs belonged to what has come to be known as the Hague School of painters.

Life

Ship on the Scheveningen Beach. When he was twelve he took some art lessons and later enrolled in the Hague Academy of Art. An art dealer recognized his talent and saw to it that Jacob was able to work in the studio of Hubertus van Hove. There he painted interiors as well as figurative and genre works.

Van Hove moved to Antwerp and the nineteen-year-old Maris went with him. This relationship continued until his brother Matthijs received a royal subsidy and joined Jacob. Together they rented space which also had room for their friend Lawrence Alma-Tadema. They took lessons at the Antwerp Academy and were able to sell some of their works.

In 1857, Jacob Maris returned to the Hague, but Matthijs stayed another year in Antwerp before he again shared a studio with Jacob in The Hague. After they had earned enough money by copying eight royal portraits, they were able to go to Oosterbeek where they met Johannes Warnardus Bilders, his son Gerard, and others who later play important parts in the Hague School. The brothers also went on a study trip together to German, Switzerland and France. When their money was spent, they again moved in with their parents and Jacob took more lessons at the Hague Academy of Art. In the summer of 1864, Jacob again went to Oosterbeek and possibly to Fontainebleau and Barbizon. Following this trip he lived in Paris from 1865 till 1871, and then returned to Holland when the Franco-Prussian War broke out.

The Windmill. In The Hague, he became a strong landscape painter painting rivers and landscapes with mills and towpaths, and beach views with fishing boats. His stroke became broader and larger and his use of color became more subdued and directed towards portraying the atmospheric depiction of clouds. This part of has been compared to the seventeenth-century painters Jan van Goyen, Jacob Van Ruisdael and Johannes Vermeer. His way of working has been described in the following way: Also, M. Philippe Zilcken said,

In 1871, Maris became a member of the Pulchri Studio and would fill various administrative positions there. It was only after 1876 that he experienced any renown in the Netherlands and from 1885 on he was a celebrated painter. As a leader of the Hague School his influence was enormous. Nevertheless, Willem de Zwart and possibly Bernard Blommers had been his only students.

When he was in his sixties, Maris began to suffer from asthma and corpulence. At the advice of his doctors he went to take the waters at Karlsbad, where he suddenly died on 7 August 1899. He was buried in The Hague.

Source

  • Sillevis, John and Tabak, Anne, The Hague School Book, Waanders Uitgegevers, Zwolle, 2004 (pp 267–276)