ART AND ARTISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2894, 1 September 1909, Page 77

ART AND ARTISTS.

■ — . m MATTHEW MARIS — His Views on Art. — Unknown and un honoured, except by a very few, there has lived in London for mere rhan 20 years, and is living to-day, one of the greatest ma.st-srs with brush *nd canvas that Holland has ever produced— Matthew Maria by name. He i*s one of three brothers. James, the eldest of the trio, is dead. Wilhclm, the youngest, is alive in his own country. Matthew, the greatest if the three— who in his published wor 1 - stands quite alone, jver apart from the recognised Dutch ma-tcrs— is itead to tha world and alive only to the chosen few. Yet it ;s; s his own whim, his own passionate, masterful desire that it &'.iould be so. Ho makes no secret of the fact that he cares not what the world think*. "I am a hermit," is a favourite phrase of his. In -his v«mth necessity forced him t<t paint and to sell pictures each for a few hundred francs. To-day those canvases fetch thousands of pounds sterling in the market. Maris knows it. raves iropotently, and characterises the pictures— whicfc the despised world of dealers and art critics call masterpiece*- — as pot-boilers. White-haired, white-bearcted, and frail, he looWt his age. He w-as 70 last month. He is pale from hi« close confinement to th 3 little flat in the We^ End, which he scarcely ever lea\es. Summer evening though it was when I called on him, he <\\ore an overcoat buttoned clo-sclv *.t the neck %vith a scarf in place of collar. In conversation he is vehement, even whon calm. • Touch, upon some subject about which he holds 6trong views and he pours out his words with an accent that makes it difficult to follow him. So it was when I mentioned the recent sale of his two pictures when his ' "The Four Mills" fetched £3300 and "Feeding Chickens" £3000. "The dealers." he cried, "buy and s-all, buy and sell. All they think of is to make mons3 — for them~el\;=. But I will ne^er put anything more of mine ot ihe maiket. "I was in Paris after the Commune. I had to live. I mu^t paint something, t>o I painted my 'kitchen. It was there. Why not? Goupil, he gave me 200 francs for it. Out; of that I had to pay 150 frame for rent, bO that I had only 50 francs for myself. "I was forced into it, and I hate it, becau«3 I was forced*. lam not a painter. I hate paint ; I on'y use :t: t as a medium. Lamp-black, toot, or charcoal do just as well. I have a friend who comes to see me sometimes, and he cays, 'Ah ! what colour have you U3ed here, and what colour there?' As if that mattered. It is not the paint at w.hich to look. "It is not the material thing, but the spirit — that which is not material. "I am not a painter. Ido not paint pictures. I try to produce work- It may take me two years or it may take me 50.

But it is the same at the end as it vraa at the be-jinning. It is finiisbed in my mind before I touch the canvas. But I have to do it again and again before I get it right. •'\\ hen I h&v-e finished the canva-3 I like to get rid of it ar onco. I hu.e dono with it. The further it gees aay the better 1 sell my wcik privately now. The p<?cple who buy \ia\e to cgree never to exhibit it, and t-'.iey are r.ot allowed to soil it. "I do not believe in exhibi-iiors of my work. It is out of place there— amongst pictures. I hats go.d francs. T-he people who go to exhibitions look at the frame first. No, no, I ne\er 6how my work." Matthew- Maris had' grown pessimistic during our talk. As he bade me goodbye he sadly remarked that, despite all his work, he had produced nothing himself. His labour had been in -vain.—Correspondent of the Evening Standard.