Willem Maris

Willem Maris (18 February 1844, The Hague – 10 October 1910, The Hague) was a Dutch landscape painter of the Hague School.

Willem was the third in a family of five children. His two brothers Jacob and Matthijs Maris preceded him as painters. In literature he is often characterized as a self-taught man, and Maris described his early study years as follows: "From the time I was young I worked outdoors. Even before I was twelve I would sit in the meadow and watch the cows before and after school. As my brothers were older than me, naturally I got part of my training from them, and in the winters I went to the Academy of Art, where I often drew from plaster models and also often practiced drawing in perspective. In the summer I always studied outdoors, and in the winter in the stable." Maris also received advice from the cattle painter Pieter Stortenbeker, who gave him work to copy.

In 1862, Maris made his debut with Cows on the Heath, which may have been painted in Oosterbeek, which he visited for the first time that year. It was in Oosterbeek that he met Gerard Bilders and Anton Mauve. Maris would write about his legendary meeting with Mauve:

a couple of days afterwards I was sitting somewhere and painting-when one of these braggarts came up behind me. Well, hey, when you're young, you don't think that's very nice. And suddenly the guy throws his arms around me and roars: 'I sit here all day long plodding away with a pencil -scratching and scratching-and you get it right away!' It was ... Mauve.

They would remain good friends for the rest of their lives.

In 1863, the Mauve family moved and set a studio where all the three brothers could work. As his brothers had done before him, Willem also took a trip along the Rhine. Later he shared a studio with Bernard Blommers, and Matthijs Maris and Anton Mauve could often be found there. In the Mauritshuis, Willem copied the works of Paulus Potter, a seventeenth-century cattle painter who also inspired Gerard Bilders, Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch and the Barbizon painters.

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