Studio: international art (18.1900)

Jacob Maris

FLOWERS ON JACOB MARIs's GRAVE FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY KNIBBE RULOFS

of one of those towns. Nevertheless, their synthe- case of his landscapes. In this respect the painter

tical power is so marked that they convey a striking has shown himself a real poet. He has done what

general impression of Amsterdam or of Dordrecht, Edmund de Goncourt once said to me was the

for Jacob Maris, as we have seen, had an extra- great characteristic of every superior artist : " To

ordinary painter's memory. create, after the manner of God, a living creature,

It was owing to his astonishingly accurate a type that shall exist throughout all centuries," as

memory for forms and colours that Maris was so is the case with the creations of Shakespeare and

successful in his interpretations of moonlight Dante. This Jacob Maris has done, if not in his-

effects, some of which are of incomparable figures, certainly in his landscapes. These, as I

delicacy and tenderness of tone, with surprising have said, are creations of his, with life enough in

"gradations of values." The same natural gift them to defy Time.

also enabled him to render in a masterly way the Though short of stature, Jacob Maris, like Theo-

mystery and the glow of nature at sunset, and phile Gautier, used always to remind me of a

scenes of rapidly-melting snow, when in Holland Merovingian warrior. As a man, again, he was*

the sky assumes a coppery hue, and the snow takes most lovable, being ever above all jealousy, and

a dreary, greyish tint. always kindness itself to everybody who came to

I pass over those numerous old windmills, so him for advice or encouragement. Never did I

richly coloured by the hand of passing time, that hear him depreciate the work of a fellow-artist. He

Jacob Maris has bequeathed us, and I need not always understood the intention concealed behind

remind you of his Grey Days, so exquisitely aerial the effort, and this enabled him to follow the beau-

and charming. tiful words of Flaubert, who said that every critic,

I have already dwelt on the synthetical import- before judging, ought to be certain that he has-

ance of Jacob Maris's pictures, especially in the penetrated to the artist's own point of view.
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