Willem Maris

(b The Hague, 18 Feb 1844; d The Hague, 10 Oct 1910). Brother of (1) Jacob Maris. He received his training as a painter from his brothers, (1) Jacob Maris and (2) Matthijs Maris. Although he briefly attended evening classes at the Academie in The Hague and was advised by the animal painter Pieter Stortenbeker (1828-98), he was basically self-taught; he was the only 'self-made' man in the circle of Hague school artists. In 1862 he visited Oosterbeek where he met Anton Mauve, with whom he established a long friendship. In the same year he first entered a painting, Cows on the Heath (untraced), in the Tentoonstellung van Levende Meesters [Exhibition of Living Masters] in Rotterdam. The themes of cows at pasture and ducks by the side of a ditch, which characterized the Dutch polder landscape in summer, became his hallmark. In the following year he exhibited Cows by a Pool (The Hague, Gemeentemus.; see fig.) in The Hague; it received discouraging reviews, as did the picture entered by his brother Matthijs. Painted in 1863, this work already employs Willem's main motif and shows his attention to the handling of light (with effects of haze and backlighting).

Part of the Maris family

See the Abbreviations for further details.

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Ducks
oil on canvas
93 x 113 cm
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

Willem Maris (February 18, 1844, The Hague - October 10, 1910, The Hague) was a Dutch landscape painter.

He got his first lessons in drawing from his brothers Jacob and Matthijs Maris. For a while he followed evening classes at the Hague Academy and later continued his studies with the cattle painter Stortenbeker. In the Mauritshuis in The Hague, Willem copied the work of the seventeenth-century animal painter Paulus Potter. From an early age Willem went outdoors to sketch the countryside. Maris painted many Dutch landscapes with animals, especially cows and ducks. In 1862 Willem Maris established himself as an independent painter. In the same year his friendship with the painter Anton Mauve began. They had met in the Gelderland village of Oosterbeek, where the Maris brothers often stayed during the summer, in the company of other painters. Like Mauve, Willem Maris was considered part of the Hague School, because it was particularly the atmosphere and mood of a landscape which he tried to capture. He portrayed his subjects with increasingly free brush-strokes. However his sun-filled pastures are much more colourful than the greyer landscapes of other painters of the Hague School. George Hendrik Breitner was one of his pupils.

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