The Modern Dutch School

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

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Three of the most famous and most interesting of the modern Dutch painters were members of one family, all born at The Hague and the sons of a struggling printer. This printer, Maris by name, was of foreign extraction, being the son of a Bohemian soldier of fortune who left his native city of Prague, married a Dutch wife, and settled in the political capital of Holland. The printer also had some experience of fighting, for in 1830 he was called up as a conscript to fight on the side of Netherlands in the war which resulted in the independence of Belgium. After this war the printer returned to a life of unbroken toil, married, and had three sons. Of these the eldest was Jacob (or James) Maris, born in 1837, next came Matthys (or Matthew), born in 1839, while the youngest, Willem, was born in 1844. In speaking of these brothers we shall here use the English equivalents of their names by which they are usually known in Great Britain and the United States.

All three sons showed at an early age remarkable talents for drawing, and notwithstanding his poverty their father appears to have realized the wisdom of allowing each to follow his artistic bent. In their early years James and Matthew were closely associated. In 1855 the talent of the latter came to the notice of Queen Sophie of Holland, who made him an allowance, and the thrifty father considering that this allowance was enough for two, both James and Matthew were able to spend a year studying and painting at the Antwerp Academy. At Antwerp the two brothers lived in the same house as Alma-Tadema, and through him they got to know his relative Mesdag, the banker-painter, Josef Israels, and other Dutch artists. But in these early days neither brother was much affected by the art of immediate contemporaries. They labored strenuously to master the technicalities of their art, and James was guided in his first efforts by a master named Van Hove. This artist, though of mediocre ability, was a very conscientious draughtsman, and under his influence James Maris produced pictures remarkable for the minuteness of the details. One of his early pictures, ‘Interior of a Dutch House,’ painted when the artist was twenty-three, is in the Mesdag Museum, and is quite in the style of Pieter de Hoogh. In the middle distance, on the left, is a sunny nook; in the foreground is the figure of a servant-girl standing in the entrance hall, holding in her right hand a basket and in her left a pewter can. All these details are painted with scrupulous exactness, and the same characteristics may be found in other domestic scenes and interiors which he painted in these early years.

The Modern Dutch School (continued)