what he cannot or will not give. We must just take what his views of art and his own nature allow him to paint. We may admire it, or we may simply endure it, or we may dislike it, but it cannot be ignored; the fact remains that there it is before us, well thought over and pondered upon in secret, wondered about, dreamed of, - what do we make of it?

Thus sitting down for a little time of quiet consideration before pictures of his different periods, we find in the first place that his work seems to belong to no school; he is one of the few painters of the world. The local and particular almost vanish, the types only remain. To get above the ordinary, and to be able to produce this aloofness from the accidents of time and place, shows the possession of one of the rarest gifts that nature can bestow upon an artist, and distinguishes him who has it from all others. The mere portraits, the catching of superficial likenesses, are things very easily done, and have a baneful effect on the great majority of pictures. The figures in these are so evidently straight from the model, and are of so little interest, that it

makes us feel a debt of gratitude to the man who can, like the Greeks in carving their superb statues, sink the model in the memory of what he has seen, and paint from the visions that have formed themselves in his mind.

Then his technical ability is of the highest order, and his sense of colour profound. Those who consider the painter-quality of pictures as the most important, readily admit the truth of this as shown in what he did until about 1874, and his work of this period, from 1860 to 1874, is the admiration of artists. There is a directness and certainty about it, a delicate draughtsmanhip, a fine sense of composition, a beauty and richness of colouring, a uniqueness of aim and execution, that place it in a class by itself.

Having arrived at this point, Matthew Maris felt that there was something escaping him; the finer spirit of the subject, that which he wished to paint, could not be described in the somewhat set terms of expression he was then using, beautiful as they were. His art must grow and develop by getting more of the

"Catalogue,

hibition,

spiritual into his work, and less of the material; form must cease to be the chief means he employs, and more must be indicated by vaguer and less distinct, yet at the same time equally effective and satisfactory methods. Looking back at his work, we find, very soon after the time of his earliest and most careful drawings, made when he was learning the technique of art, that the germ of his later ideas is to be found in his work from about 1860 onwards. This is seen mainly in the typical character of the faces. They are never suggestive of the portrait or the model, and there is a wondering thoughtfulness in them. They cannot reveal the mystery of their being, the riddle of existence, nor can the observer make it out, but it seems to be there, ever present and inscrutable, as in the Mona Lisa, and the Sphinx.

This is what Matthew Maris is striving for, Dutch Ex- and we see the spiritual side of his work growing, while the form gradually becomes less dwelt upon. Yet, as has been well said, "The more he strives to abandon material form, the more hauntingly he expresses it." And

1904." Whitechapel Art Gallery.