DOI Heft:
No. 82 (January, 1900)
DOI Artikel:Zilcken, Philippe: The late Jacob Maris
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19783#0257
Jacob Maris
THE LATE JACOB MARIS, it he succeeded. When we stand before one of his
BY P. ZILCKEN. views of towns—or before one of his lonely beaches
with a solitary fishing-smack—the fresh wet wind
When Balzac lay dying, Victor Hugo comes up, and the sensation of "plein-air" is
said: " Messieurs, FEurope va perdre un grand' often indescribably refreshing. He understood the
esprit." These words, I think, may be applied secret of nature's magic, and was seldom misled
to Jacob Maris, that truly great artist and good into superficialities of technique by the ease with
man. By his death the modern Dutch school which he painted. This is one reason why we are
loses one of its strong men, and there are but able to feel in his work what Maris himself loved
few at the present moment. When, after the long best in nature—the charm of air, and light, and
period of decadence that lasted from the eighteenth colour. We must remember, also, that he was
century till about i860, a few real artists appeared a master of composition ; he knew how to balance
—Israels, Bosboom, Mauve, the brothers Maris, his masses of light and shade with a free and wise
and Mesdag—a new movement in art, based certainty that gave a very uncommon restfulness to
on the principles of the great school of 1600, the general aspect of his pictures,
began in Holland; but it has already reached its It has been a delight to me to make many an
culminating-point, and may soon commence to etching after his work, and I have always been
harden into mannerism and dryness. Already struck by the exact harmony of the linear composi-
each domain of art has begun to encroach upon tion, so artfully concealed by the other harmony
its fellows, borrowing inappropriate qualities from of tone and colour. The lines all correspond
them ; and as soon as
painting ceases to be a
faithful impression of what
colour, tone and line can
do, decadence sets in.
L'art pour Part is not a
mere phrase, a scrap of
cant: it has been the chief
characteristic of every great
expression of art, in poetry
and music no less than in
painting.
In thinking of that group
of Dutch artists who ap-
peared in the " sixties,"
Jacob Maris always seems
to stand out as the most
genuine painter, and surely
none can doubt that his
present high reputation
will be enduring. Few
painters have proved more
clearly than he has the
truth of Flaubert's words :
" The ideal is only at-
tained through the real,
and one arrives at truth
only by generalising."
Jacob Maris rarely
worked out of doors ; per-
haps he never did so after
his early youth. But he
had a singularly retentive
memory, and by virtue of portrait ok jacoh maris from a photograph by p. zii.cken
XVIII. No. 82.—January, 1900 2-1
THE LATE JACOB MARIS, it he succeeded. When we stand before one of his
BY P. ZILCKEN. views of towns—or before one of his lonely beaches
with a solitary fishing-smack—the fresh wet wind
When Balzac lay dying, Victor Hugo comes up, and the sensation of "plein-air" is
said: " Messieurs, FEurope va perdre un grand' often indescribably refreshing. He understood the
esprit." These words, I think, may be applied secret of nature's magic, and was seldom misled
to Jacob Maris, that truly great artist and good into superficialities of technique by the ease with
man. By his death the modern Dutch school which he painted. This is one reason why we are
loses one of its strong men, and there are but able to feel in his work what Maris himself loved
few at the present moment. When, after the long best in nature—the charm of air, and light, and
period of decadence that lasted from the eighteenth colour. We must remember, also, that he was
century till about i860, a few real artists appeared a master of composition ; he knew how to balance
—Israels, Bosboom, Mauve, the brothers Maris, his masses of light and shade with a free and wise
and Mesdag—a new movement in art, based certainty that gave a very uncommon restfulness to
on the principles of the great school of 1600, the general aspect of his pictures,
began in Holland; but it has already reached its It has been a delight to me to make many an
culminating-point, and may soon commence to etching after his work, and I have always been
harden into mannerism and dryness. Already struck by the exact harmony of the linear composi-
each domain of art has begun to encroach upon tion, so artfully concealed by the other harmony
its fellows, borrowing inappropriate qualities from of tone and colour. The lines all correspond
them ; and as soon as
painting ceases to be a
faithful impression of what
colour, tone and line can
do, decadence sets in.
L'art pour Part is not a
mere phrase, a scrap of
cant: it has been the chief
characteristic of every great
expression of art, in poetry
and music no less than in
painting.
In thinking of that group
of Dutch artists who ap-
peared in the " sixties,"
Jacob Maris always seems
to stand out as the most
genuine painter, and surely
none can doubt that his
present high reputation
will be enduring. Few
painters have proved more
clearly than he has the
truth of Flaubert's words :
" The ideal is only at-
tained through the real,
and one arrives at truth
only by generalising."
Jacob Maris rarely
worked out of doors ; per-
haps he never did so after
his early youth. But he
had a singularly retentive
memory, and by virtue of portrait ok jacoh maris from a photograph by p. zii.cken
XVIII. No. 82.—January, 1900 2-1