Jacob MARIS (1837-1899) ✿

Jacob Maris (August 25, 1837 – August 7, 1899) was a Dutch painter, considered to be the most important and influential Dutch landscape painter of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. With his brothers Willem and Matthijs belonged to what has come to be known as the Hague School of painters.

His first teacher was painter J.A.B. Stroebel who taught him the art of painting from 1849 to 1852. Jacob Maris's most known works are the series of portraits of the royal House of Orange, he worked on these with his brother Matthijs Maris. He is also known for landscapes such as Ship on the Scheveningen beach.

He was born in The Hague. When he was twelve he took some art lessons and later enrolled in the Hague Academy of Art. from 1850 to 1853 he attended this highly ranked art University. 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 took Maris under his wings and was not only his boss but also his new teacher.

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.

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.