Studio: international art (18.1900)

Jacob Maris

young children sitting in baby chairs with a pewter
plate of red cherries before them, whose glittering,
sparkling light transposed the white of the baby's
dress into a light greyish hue, which Maris managed
to harmonise with the surrounding objects.

Here were painted the Violinist, the Girl playing
the Piano, The Peacock Feather, and those numerous
pictures that give so complete a synthetical vision
of Holland's landscape, that if ever the Nether-
lands were overwhelmed by the waves of the North
Sea, Maris's paintings, scattered over the whole
civilised world, would afford a clear idea of what
that country had been like.

For Maris has not, like many other landscape-
painters, restricted his subjects to a special genre,
but has given Holland in all its moods and aspects,
from old-fashioned towns to lonely beaches, and

from grey river scenery to bright cloud effects. Thus
has he preserved for coming generations the massive
drawbridges, the primitive harbours near some
Dutch towns, where multi-coloured barges are
moored waiting to be eased of their burdens, the
wide expanding sands, above which rise the calmly
floating cloud-banks; the obsolete, fast disappear-
ing wooden bridges resting on richly-coloured
brickwork and overgrown with mosses and lichens,
over which the milkmaids pass in their picturesque
national garb, carrying their pails yoked on their
shoulders.

And then we have his views of Amsterdam,
Rotterdam, or Dordrecht, which are sometimes
better called Vicivs of a Town, or Souvenirs of
Amsterdam or of Dordrecht, as they are never
exact views of any special locality or of any part