Jacob Maris, 'A Young Woman nursing a Baby', 1868

Jacob Maris was known primarily as a highly successful painter of Dutch landscapes, but he also painted interiors with people and genre subjects. This small intimate picture was painted in Paris, where he lived from 1865 until he returned to the Netherlands in 1871 following the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War the previous year.

The woman is almost certainly Maris’s wife Catharina Hendrika Horn, whom he married in 1867. Their first child, Guillaume, was born in April 1868, but died in March 1869. A pencil study squared for transfer to the painting, which belonged to the Maris family, shows the child suckling – unlike the finished picture. In the painting, the woman’s right breast was originally uncovered, but was later painted over, although probably not by Maris.

The picture is painted on mahogany, and built up with smooth glazes, unlike the thick impasto paint of Maris’s later work. The pale skin tones of both the woman and the child direct our attention to their interaction. Elsewhere, Maris skilfully contrasts touches and areas of white paint – for example, the woman’s pearl earring and the crumpled linen covering her lap – with the dark tones of the room. The delicate still life of flowers on the table perhaps shows the influence of Henri Fantin-Latour, whose work Maris would have seen In Paris.