Autumn evening

Matthijs Maris was one of the most distinctive Dutch painters of the late nineteenth century — his symbolist approach, developed during an extended Paris period and later in London, set him apart from both the Hague School naturalism of his brother Anton and the mainstream of Dutch painting. His 'Autumn Evening' (1889) belongs to his late symbolist production, increasingly enigmatic images produced in conditions of isolation from the Dutch mainstream. His autumn subjects carried the melancholy and spiritual yearning that characterized all his late work — the dying season as a metaphor for the human condition.

Matthijs Maris renders the autumn evening with his characteristic atmospheric dissolution — forms emerging from or dissolving into a misty atmospheric ground with the quality of vision rather than direct sight. His technique at this late stage was highly personal and technically experimental, the surface of his paintings developed through complex processes of scraping, working, and reworking. The autumn evening light is handled with the symbolic rather than naturalistic atmospheric sensitivity of his mature symbolist vision.