Matthijs Maris

Matthijs Maris (1839–1917) initially achieved fame as a Hague School landscape painter, like his famous brothers Jacob and Willem. Over the years he abandoned this realistic style for more introverted and symbolic themes, portraying dreamy children, fairytale figures and mythical landscapes using an increasingly smudged painting technique. In his own time, Maris was admired at home and abroad by collectors and artists (including Vincent van Gogh), but despite his success, Maris grew increasingly bitter and spent his last years secluded in his London studio.

This publication, a companion volume to Marthijs Maris at Work, tells the painter’s story through more than 75 paintings, drawings, etchings and pieces of applied art drawn from the collections of the Rijksmuseum and The Burrell Collection in Glasgow, providing the first broad overview of the work of this unjustly forgotten artist.

This richly illustrated publication allows us to peak over the shoulder of Dutch painter, etcher and lithographer Matthijs Maris (1839–1917) as he works on his pictures. A precursor of the Symbolist movement who initially trained in Hague School landscape painting, Maris spent his whole career in search of techniques that would allow him to break free from painting reality. He was a singular figure in his own time and notoriously secretive about the working methods that produced his mysterious paintings. Matthijs Maris at Work, published to accompany the artist’s first complete career retrospective, features the research of conservators and technical art historians on 15 of the artist’s key works. For the first time, the enigmatic structures of Maris’ paintings and his idiosyncratic combinations of materials are explained, offering a glimpse into the artist’s experimental zeal and unorthodox studio practice.