Matthijs Maris at work

Fig. 1 Paint box of Camille Corot (1769–1875) with landscape and figure studies in the lid. Oil on wood, closed box 7.7 × 37 × 27 cm.

The Hague, Gemeentemuseum, inv. no. 1027170. Maris bought this paint box in 1875 at the Vente Corot.

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Experiments in Paint

Gogh also mentions Hendrik Jan Furnée, who had a chemist’s shop in The Hague, where he sold artists’ materials.6 The two Maris brothers may have used these suppliers when they were living in The Hague.

The canvas and stretcher stamps on five of the paintings we examined identify some of the colourmen Matthijs Maris frequented in Paris and London.7 For Quarry at Montmartre (1872, see no. 3) Matthijs used a canvas stamped ‘Blanchet Paris’ on the back. Both L’enfant couchée (c. 1885–1900, see no. 8) and Butterflies (1874, see no. 5) have a similar Blanchet Paris stamp on the stretcher (FIG. 2A).

This particular stamp probably relates to the business at 17 Rue Grenelle-Saint Germain, where it was based from 1868 to 1885.

The Pond (c. 1885–1900, see no. 8) was stamped ‘Lechertier & Barbe, 60 Regent Street, London’ on the back of the canvas (FIG. 2B).

Originally established in Paris in 1810 and speciali­zing as brush makers, Lechertier & Barbe traded as artists’ colourmen in London from 1827 until 1899. The firm also sold artists’ materials imported from the Continent. Child with Lemon (c. 1887–90) has a canvas stamp from Newman, Soho Square, London.8 The firm of James Newman, a well-respected colour merchant, was based at 24 Soho Square from 1801 to 1937. A 1934 article in The Times, ‘Grinding Colours by Hand’, describes the Soho premises: ‘The counter, bearing pyramids of sketch-books and sheaves of brushes’, and ‘a monster paint box built of ebony and inlaid silver for the Crystal Palace Exhibition’. There were ‘stacks of dusty China palettes’ and ‘endless reams of paper’. The factory was made up of a ‘washing-room, grinding-room, drying-room and filling-room’. According to the article everything needed to prepare paints was done by hand.9 Often, the actual manufacturing would take place in premises on the edge of the city due to the large-scale operations and the toxicity of the materials used, while the products would be sold in the colourman’s city centre shop.

Although we may assume that Maris would also buy his other materials from Blanchet in Paris, and Lechertier & Barbe and Newman once in London, an unexpected source added more names to the list. In 1875, Maris bought a paint box at the Vente Corot, a sale in Paris of the estate of the French landscape painter Jean-BaptisteCamille Corot (1796-1875).10 The younger painter was a great admirer, and the paint box, with Corot’s beautiful small landscape and figure studies painted directly on the inside of the lid, must have been special to Maris. The little sketches present a visual travel log of Corot’s many sojourns in the 1820s and 1830s, showing the places he visited and painted.11 Ernest D. Fridlander describes, in his book Matthew Maris, the paint box’s special place in Maris’s London studio: ‘There stood the master’s easel, always in the same position, an old oil colour box beneath it.’12 This account is reminiscent of the Matthijs Maris Room in the National Academy of Arts in Amsterdam (1923), a reconstruction of the painter’s last London studio. A photograph of the room shows the paint box on a stool beside the easel (p. 18, FIG. 9).

The paint box, now in the collection of the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague (FIG. 1), contains fifteen paint tubes from English, French and German colourmen: Lechertier, Roberson, Winsor & Newton and Newman, all based in London; Richard Aines, Frères Ottoz, a company that started trading in 1827 and from which we know Corot bought some canvases,13 and Lefranc, both in Paris; and Dr Schoenfeld in Dusseldorf. Although the small sketches in the lid connect the paint box with Corot’s early career, which means it would have contained paints in bladders, the two French tubes could have been his, as by the time of his death Corot and most of his contemporaries would have been using tube paints. As the dating of the rather damaged labels is insecure, however, we cannot rule out that they belonged to Maris, who was in Paris for another

Erma Hermens

‘As considerations of questions of technique were distasteful to the master, we may pass them over here, only remembering that the chief object of his own was not so much to represent the apparent texture of anything material outside of himself, but rather to enable him to present a far less tangible fabric, one which most nearly expressed the spirit of things as they appeared…’1 Most descriptions of Matthijs Maris’s work – as in this quote – focus on the ‘less tangible fabric’, while the actual material make-up of his paintings receives little attention. Nevertheless, while it may have been ‘distasteful to the master’ to consider questions of tech­ nique – and there are indeed very few comments from the rather reticent Maris himself – our close scrutiny of his works reveals a technically skilled artist with material preferences and interests.

Some of his contemporaries describe Maris as an enigmatic painter who took years to finish his works and struggled to translate his ‘conceptions’ into matter. Our research yields some surprising results which demystify Maris at work and illuminate the methods he used to express the ‘spirit of things’, as David Croal Thomson (1855–1930), art dealer and critic, so aptly put it in his Illustrated Souvenir of Maris on the occasion of the Maris Memorial Exhibition in 1917–18.2 Although Maris searched for his own technical language, experi­ menting and developing an extensive repertoire in paint handling, a comparison with the various artistic environments he worked in shows that this was not done in isolation. As he spent most of his career in Paris and London, this ‘wonderful if sometimes weird artist’3 must have been aware of the techniques, materials and technical innovations of his international contemporaries, for example the Pre-Raphaelites, French Realists, Impressionists and the artists of the Aesthetic Movement, such as James McNeill Whistler, whose work he admired.

This study is limited in time and scope and therefore by no means comprehensive, but it does allow a tentative evaluation of the testimonies from his contemporaries and past and present critics alike about the mysteries surrounding Maris’s studio practice.

This essay introduces Maris’s artistic environment and discusses suppliers he used, materials available to him, and the technical choices he made, as background to the case studies. The results of this technical survey may also lead to a better understanding of the condition of Maris’s paintings in the light of contemporary discourse on faulty materials and techniques, and will inform present conservation practice.

Maris’s materials and his colourmen Maris does not mention any preferred colourmen in his writings unlike other artists who often express their clear preferences for a certain brand of canvas or paint. It is known, for example, that the Barbizon painters used at least twenty-four different suppliers.4 We may assume that Maris, too, would choose materials most suited for his work, buying them from those colourmen that offered the best range, price and quality for his needs.

We know very little about the suppliers of artists’ materials Maris used before he left for France. In a letter from Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, Vincent explains how he needs natural chalk: ‘I found a very small remnant at a chemist’s, about six pieces but all in small bits. Bear it in mind. When I asked Leurs about it again he told me that Jaap Maris had often asked him for it.’5 Leurs is Wilhelmus Johannes Leurs, a frame maker in The Hague who sold artists’ materials and apparently supplied materials to Jacob. Van 23

Fig. 1 L’Enfant couchée, 1873. Oil on canvas, 36 × 54 cm. Signed in red the lower right corner: M. Maris. 73. Private Collection.

Fig. 2 Butterflies, 1874. Oil on canvas, 64.8 × 99.1 cm. Signed in green in the lower right corner: M. Maris 74.

Glasgow, Glasgow Museums (The Burrell Collection), inv. no. 35/330.

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5 Primary and Complementary Colour L’Enfant couchée (1873) Butterflies (1874) L’enfant couchée (FIG. 1) and Butterflies (FIG. 2) were among the most successful works Maris created during his stay in Paris in the early 1870s. Contemporary critics reviewing both paintings, which are unusually colourful for Maris, placed them in the Aesthetic Movement, where narrative was subordinated to art for art’s sake.

Maris may have taken his inspiration from Pre-Raphaelite works, such as John Everett Millais’s Ophelia,1 but here he goes beyond the story and presents a harmony of colours similar to, for example, James McNeill Whistler’s portraits, with their focus on tones and contrasts and evocative titles of colour ‘harmonies’, ‘symphonies’ and ‘arrangements’. Maris has been described as using a rather limited range of pigments: lead white, cobalt, vermilion, green earth, yellow and golden ochre and bone black. However, our research of these two works and other seemingly less vibrant works in this study (e.g. The Pond, see no. 8) has shown that his actual palette contained a much broader range.

Cross-sections taken in the dark area of the background of Butter­ flies, as well as the lighter foreground, indicate a rather complex layering of paint, with up to eleven layers (FIGS. 3A–B). This shows that Maris reworked the composition many times before settling on the final tone.2 He painted on a commercial double off-white ground of lead white with chalk, barium sulphate, some earth pigments and bone black. The darker middle layers contain a mixture of red lakes, cobalt, bone black, earth pigments, some lead white; the top layers consist mainly of lead white with some earth pigments and a little bone black and cobalt.

Although some of the paint layers consist of Maris’s preferred choice of colour, we also identified red lakes, Naples yellow, and Prussian blue, which he added to create subtle colour variations.

The darker paint layers in the cross-sections look very similar, but in UV light we see the bright red fluorescence of the red lake particles, as well as thin fluorescent lines between some of these layers, indicating that they are oil rich, which resulted in a thin oil film forming on top during drying. This, and the possible use of a faster drying oil in some of the other layers due to an added lead drier, caused uneven drying processes. In an SEM backscatteredelectron image of the cross-section, fine cracks between some of these seemingly similar paint layers can be distinguished, probably caused by the differ­ences in drying time of the oil binding medium (FIG. 3C). The clear distinction between these layers in the crosssection indicates that they were not applied wet-in-wet. Maris must have left time between the reworking of the composition, which accords with a process that was elaborate and long rather than swift and sponta­neous. Fridlander describes how ‘frequently he would work over and over things many times, sometimes ending with an effect that well may recall to us the words of Omar [sic]: “Veil after veil will lift, but there must always be veil after veil behind”.’3 Interestingly, cross-sections taken in the copper-coloured hair and the girl’s foot in Butterflies present a much simpler build-up of one to three layers, as if the girls were more planned. A drawing dating from 1872–73, shows a child similar to the one in L’enfant couchée, albeit a little younger, with several studies of the position of the arms on the same sheet (FIG. 5). Maris may have made similar studies of models for both compositions, leaving the background to develop during the final stages of painting.

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FigS. 3A–C Cross-section (35.330-02) taken from the light background area on the right top edge of Butterflies showing the build-up with up to eleven layers of paint (Dark field, 200x) (a). The red lake pigments in the crosssection fluoresce bright red in UV light (200x) (b). SEM backscatteredelectron image (350x) showing the structure of a detail of the crosssection with fine cracks between the third and fourth layer. It also shows a white line around some of the red lake particles, due to presence of lead (lead drier) in the oil used in that particular layer (c).

Fig. 1 Fairy tale, c. 1876. Oil on panel (mahogany), 18 Ă— 38 cm. Signed in red in the lower right corner: M. Maris. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. SK-A-2705, gift of the heirs of W.J. van Randwijk, The Hague.

Fig. 2 The reverse of Fairy Tale. The support consists of a single vertically grained, well-crafted mahogany panel with bevelled edges at the back.

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6 A Rare Panel fairy tale (c. 1877) A young red-haired woman in a yellow and green-grey fantasy dress, carrying a distaff, slowly approaches a pond (FIG. 1). As she comes near, two ducks fly up out of the water. This scene is set against a rural landscape with an open foreground. In the far distance, the silhouette of the castle in Lausanne can be made out against the icy blue sky. Matthijs Maris painted Fairy Tale around 1877, just after his move from Paris to London. In 1880, he presented the small painting to his friend David A.C. Artz as a wedding gift. The painting was not made to sell, and is believed to be one of the first works Maris made after he left Paris, in which he stayed true to his own ideals.1 The support consists of a single vertically grained, well-crafted mahogany panel with bevelled edges at the back (FIG. 2).2 Fairy Tale is one of the few works Maris painted directly on a wooden support, and the only case discussed in this study.3 Although the use of panel supports was not uncommon in the nineteenth century, it is not clear why Maris decided to work on mahogany for this particular painting, particularly since this type of wood was relatively expensive.4 Mahogany was valued by many painters because of its warm brown colour, which would frequently be left exposed when painting on unprimed panels.5 This was clearly not a motive for Maris, since his panel was primed. The superior longevity of a wooden support over canvas might have been a consideration, but there is no indication that this was of concern to him. It is more likely that he purposely selected a rigid texture-free support. The inspiration for Fairy Tale was not dictated by the art market, and perhaps Maris felt he had more freedom to experiment and employ other materials.

Relatively little is known about panel primings in the nineteenth century, but it is generally thought that similar materials were used for panels and canvas, and that oil-based grounds were the norm.6 Pre-primed mahogany panels, such as that of Fairy Tale, were available from colourmen like Winsor & Newton, Reeves,7 George Rowney & Co,8 and Lechertier & Barbe (FIG. 4).9 These suppliers would generally offer panels in different standard sizes, sometimes with the option of choosing between an oil or absorbent ground.10 Unfortunately, there are no colourmen’s stamps or other suppliers’ marks on the back of Fairy Tale that reveal the panel’s provenance.

The panel is primed with a very even, white ground layer, which shines through in some areas that have been left unpainted.

As such it adds to the overall brilliance and cool tone that contrasts with the bright paints used for the female. The priming is oil-based and comprises lead white with the addition of gypsum, barytes and silicates.11 The last three ingredients might have been added deliberately as extenders, but could also be adulterants in a cheaper grade of manufactured lead white.12 The absorbent properties of gypsum in the ground typically give the painting a slightly matt appearance.13 As the paint would be less subject to darkening due to the extraction of the oil binder, this type of ground would have been beneficial in retaining the pigments’ vividness. However, it is difficult to establish whether Maris indeed intended the painting to have a matt appearance, as it has been varnished during previous restorations, and little is known about Maris’s varnish practice in this period.

Maris created an illusion of depth with a simple trick he used on a number of occasions: he divided the composition into three sections.14 Despite the apparent simplicity of the design, the infrared reflectogram reveals that Maris did make an underdrawing (FIG. 3A). He used a dark, diluted paint which is visible in areas where the ground is exposed, such as in the woman’s right sleeve (FIG. 3B) and in the foliage. The preliminary sketch was executed in a minimal and

Figs. 3A–B Detail of the infrared reflectogram showing an underdrawing using a dark, diluted paint (a).

The dark paint is visible in areas where the ground is exposed, such as in the woman’s right sleeve (b).

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