ART AND ARTISTS

Otago Witness, Issue 2801, 20 November 1907, Page 86

ART AND ARTISTS

A SOLDIER-PAINTER: MATTHEW MARIS.

As young men in their twenties, J&meV and Matthew Maris travelled in Geiman^; and Switzerland, and were together its Paris when the Franco-German war broke out. Matthew enrolled in the Municipal Guard, and was posted on the fortifications just under Mont "Valedien. One oold and bleak nighfc Matthew MarU related that he secured a monk's coat with ■>. hood, which ho donned to keep out the dreadful cold. He put his gun under his arms and his hands deep in the wide sleeves. He noticed a piece of wood among the puddle?, and he found it large enough to stand upon and at least keep his feet out of the water. He goes on to say that he was feeling; comparatively comfortable when some noisa occurred very near, and far below whero he was standing sentry. He called out, and received for answer, "Artillerie I" "Tant mieux," he said, and was glad it waa nothing 1 else, for the cold had so numbed his fingers that to save his life he could not have fired my rifle. "Besides" — and £ now quote the artist's own words — "I never put a bullet in my gun, but only pretended" to do so. That is Matthew Mari?. A dweller in the heights, who regards himself as having descended to paint the) "Souvenir of Amsterdam" — "only a potboiler; one of my suicides"— finding the machinery of his art intolerable in the expression of his visions, glad m his day to take the pay of a soldier.

After 1871 the paths of the two brothers lay apart. That of James had become smooth, while Matthew was going on his lonesome way which led to London and seclusion there. — Croal Thomson, in th« Studio.