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Christa Zaat



Jacob Hendricus Maris (Dutch painter) 1837 - 1899
Girl Knitting on a Balcony, Montmartre, 1869
oil on canvas
110 x 75.7 cm. (43.31 x 29.8 in.)
Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague, The Netherlands

In 1865 Jacob Maris settled in Paris, where he began painting this series of 'Italiennes' in the studio of Ernest Hebert. In 1866 he made his debut at the Salon with a Petite fille italienne and he won a prize with a similar work that he sent to an exhibition of watercolours in Utrecht. This Girl knitting on a balcony is one of the last of the series and may be identical with the Tricoteuse that he sent to the Salon in 1869. The Corot-like background can be seen in his work several years earlier, while the same balcony appears in a picture dated 1867.

The restrained tonality, contrasting with Jacob's earlier, rather colourful palette, has been attributed by De Gruyter to the renewed influence of Matthijs Maris, who joined his brother in Paris early in 1869. However, Matthijs painted very little in his first years in Paris ; in fact there can be no question of his influence in this work, since Jacob sold it to Goupil's in March 1869 and Matthijs did not arrive in Paris until May of that year.

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Jacob Maris, with his brothers Willem and Matthijs belonged to what has come to be known as the Hague School of painters.
When he was twelve he took some art lessons and later enrolled in the Hague Academy of Art. An art dealer recognized his talent and saw to it that Jacob was able to work in the studio of Hubertus van Hove. There he painted interiors as well as figurative and genre works.
Van Hove moved to Antwerp and the nineteen-year-old Maris went with him. This relationship continued until his brother Matthijs received a royal subsidy and joined Jacob. Together they rented space which also had room for their friend Lawrence Alma-Tadema. They took lessons at the Antwerp Academy and were able to sell some of their works.
In 1857, Jacob Maris returned to the Hague, but Matthijs stayed another year in Antwerp before he again shared a studio with Jacob in The Hague. After they had earned enough money by copying eight royal portraits, they were able to go to Oosterbeek where they met Johannes Warnardus Bilders, his son Gerard, and others who later play important parts in the Hague School. The brothers also went on a study trip together to German, Switzerland and France. When their money was spent, they again moved in with their parents and Jacob took more lessons at the Hague Academy of Art. In the summer of 1864, Jacob again went to Oosterbeek and possibly to Fontainebleau and Barbizon. Following this trip he lived in Paris from 1865 till 1871, and then returned to Holland when the Franco-Prussian War broke out.

In The Hague, he became a strong landscape painter painting rivers and landscapes with mills and towpaths, and beach views with fishing boats. His stroke became broader and larger and his use of color became more subdued and directed towards portraying the atmospheric depiction of clouds. This part of has been compared to the seventeenth-century painters Jan van Goyen, Jacob Van Ruisdael and Johannes Vermeer. His way of working has been described in the following way:
They say that he paints first and draws only afterwards. He applies the paint thickly, builds it up, fiddles around and messes with it-all gradually developing a harmony of colors that establishes the major directions. Only then does he complete his figures with lively, thin brush strokes. But the final touch is done with a master stroke, and in the end the entire work is as solid as the tightest drawing.
Also, M. Philippe Zilcken said,
No painter has so well expressed the ethereal effects, bathed in air and light through floating silvery mist, in which painters delight, and the characteristic remote horizons blurred by haze; or again, the grey yet luminous weather of Holland, unlike the dead grey rain of England or the heavy sky of Paris.

In 1871, Maris became a member of the Pulchri Studio and would fill various administrative positions there. It was only after 1876 that he experienced any renown in the Netherlands and from 1885 on he was a celebrated painter. As a leader of the Hague School his influence was enormous. Nevertheless, Willem de Zwart and possibly Bernard Blommers had been his only students.
When he was in his sixties, Maris began to suffer from asthma and corpulence. At the advice of his doctors he went to take the waters at Karlsbad, where he suddenly died on 7 August 1899. He was buried in The Hague.