The Veiled Lady

Matthijs Maris

(The Hague 1839 – 1917 London)

The Veiled Lady, 1885-87

Oil on canvas, 61,5 x 36 cm
Signed with monogram center right MM

Provenance:
Probably directly acquired from the artist by Percy Westmacott (1830-1917), Barnwell;
Christie’s, London, 10 May 1918, no. 58 (Percy Westmacott Sale);
Mrs. A. J. Cohen Stuart, London (by 1918); 
Christie’s, Amsterdam, 26 April 1995, lot 274;
Private collection, The Netherlands. 

Exhibited:
Matthijs Maris, London, The French Gallery, 1917, no. 14A; 
Matthew Maris: an illustrated souvenir, London, The French Gallery, 1917-18, no. 22;
Maris Tentoonstelling, The Hague, Gemeentemuseum, 2 December 1935 – 2. February 1936 and Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, 8 February 1936 – 8 Maart 1936, no. 198;
Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, Matthijs Maris, 17 August – 1 October 1939, no. 29;
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, on loan by a private collector, February 1996 – December 1999.

Literature:
D. Croal Thomson a.o., Matthew Maris: an illustrated Souvenir, Exhibition Catalogue The French Gallery London, London 1918, fig. 22;
Maris Tentoonstelling, Exhibition Catalogue Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, 1935, p. 72, no. 198;
Hendrik Enno van Gelder, Matthijs Maris, Amsterdam, 1939, pp. 51-52;
Jong Holland, 2001, XVII, no. 4, p. 18, illustrated;
Leen Veerman, Matthijs Maris: Ongeschikt voor andermans paden, Eindhoven 2013, p. XXX;
Exhibition catalogue Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Matthijs Maris, 2017, p. 222, no. 64A, illustrated.

Matthijs Maris was born as the son of a book printer in The Hague in the Netherlands in 1839. He and his brothers Jacob and Willem were encouraged to draw at home by their father. His two brothers became celebrated members of the Hague School, a group of painters developing Dutch impressionism. Matthijs’s singular outlook on life and art directed him towards a different and international career. He was talented but unsociable, rarely satisfied and he was hypersensitive for critic on his work. In some cases he immediately destroyed his work after having been criticized. Most of his life he had very little money and preferred to paint independently rather than to meet the expectations of collectors and art dealers. Yet, his creative talent, courage to experiment, eccentric lifestyle and idiosyncratic paintings inspired young artists. They perceived Maris as an artist who fought his entire life against the establishment and for his artistic freedom and celebrated him as a pioneer of symbolism. Although his work was at the end of his life internationally renowned and commanded record-breaking prices, he eventually led a secluded life in his studio in London. 

Maris followed drawing lessons at the drawing academy in The Hague from 1852-55 and continued his education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp from 1855-1858. Maris’s talent impressed fellow students at the academy and they regarded him as the most intellectual of their peers. He became familiar with German Romantic art that he admired, in particular the work of Ludwig Richter.^[i]

In 1858 Maris returned to The Hague where he and his brothers worked as professional painters. Their insufficient income forced them to move back in with their parents. Matthijs and his brother Jacob made a journey to Germany, Switzerland and France in 1860. The following years Matthijs received some very harsh criticism on work that he was offering to collectors or showed at exhibitions. It made him become bitter and even more withdrawn. In 1865 his brother Jacob left the miserable situation in The Hague for Paris where he became successful in selling his paintings to the international art dealers Goupil & Cie a.o. Jacob convinced Matthijs to join him in Paris in 1869. 

Matthijs enjoyed Paris but he disliked the paintings that his brother was making for the art market. During the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 Matthijs joined the National Guard. Jacob returned to the Netherlands after the war while Matthijs stayed and suffered poverty. He became, for his doing, very productive encouraged by the wish to improve his distressful financial situation. Although Maris‘s work was finally appreciated and Goupil was among his clients, he didn’t like his own paintings, mainly depictions of young ladies and city views. Forced to make a living, Maris later disdainfully described these works as Potboilers. The young Vincent van Gogh, who greatly admired Maris’s work, asked him if he could be trained by him, but Maris refused. The London based designer and art dealer Daniël Cottier, the most important buyer of Maris’s work, convinced the unsatisfied painter to leave Paris for London in 1877.

In London Cottier offered Maris lodging, bought some of his work and asked him to do different kind of commissions varying from designing stained glass windows, chandeliers and tiles. Maris was inspired by the work of the Pre-Raphaelites and James McNeil Whistler. The fact that Maris and Cottier had different expectations about their cooperation troubled their relationship over the years. Maris felt that he had not enough freedom to paint what he wanted. The London based Dutch art dealer Elbert Jan van Wisselingh and his fiancé, were willing to help Maris in this unsatisfying situation. They offered him an income and lodging so that he was able to concentrate on his work. Unfortunately Maris, who lead a withdrawn life in his studio, produced very few works during the last part of his life. The Scottish art collector William Burell bought most of his paintings and drawings made in England. The English and Dutch newspapers praised Maris’s talent and the importance of his work after his death in London in 1917.

Around 1885-87, before the end of the collaboration with Cottier, Maris made two paintings and a drawing depicting a veiled lady. The present work, another slightly smaller painting, depicting the lady to the left (Fig. 1) and a similar size chalk drawing, now in The Burell Collection (Fig. 2). Maris described them later as, work that he painted secretly, ‘eating from the forbidden fruit’. His friend and art collector Percy Westmacott acquired both oil paintings. They were shown at Maris’s memorial exhibition at The French Gallery in London in 1917. In The Veiled Lady Maris experimented with painting techniques to create new visual effects. His aim was to suggest that the applied paint was translucent and immaterial. He applied very thin layers of paint that he than partly removed by scraping it off until an effect resulted that was described as ‘breathed upon the canvas’. The visible structure of the canvas plays an important role in this effect too.

Besides the ghost-like appearance of the female figure the painting shows nothing else but darkness. Her long veil works as a sort of foggy filter blurring the outlines of her elongated body parts and relatively small hands. It’s not clear who the lady is, what she stands for or why Maris painted her. She has been interpreted as Gretchen from Wolfgang Goethe’s Faust, as a depiction of a novice or a bride. Possibly the wedding of Van Wisseling and his fiancé, his most important contacts at the time inspired Maris. He gave them a painting, Fantasy, showing a couple seen from behind directed towards a similar dark spacious background, warning the Van Wisselinghs for the uncertainties of life. By symbolist artists in the 1890’s brides were regarded as a symbol for the Femme Fragile, the embodiment of the spiritual and innocent. Their counter part was the Femme Fatale that represented the sensual and earthly. Despite the people’s wish to understand the deeper meaning of this and other works Maris expressed on several occasions that he was
frustrated by the viewer’s attempt to do so.