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Jacob Maris, 'Three Windmills', 1880

About the work

Born in The Hague, Jacob Maris trained at the city’s Drawing Academy and at the Academy in Antwerp. His interest in specifically Dutch landscape perhaps began on his first visit in 1859 to the artists’ colony at the village of Oosterbeek. After travelling in northern Europe, Jacob moved to Paris in 1865, where he encountered work by Corot and by the Barbizon group of landscape painters, who became the prototype for the Oosterbeek colony (itself sometimes referred to as the Barbizon of the North). He returned to the Netherlands in 1871, where he became a leading figure of the Hague School of painters.

This relatively small, dark painting shows Jacob’s preference for typically Dutch subjects, which include the windmills, still river or canal and overcast sky we see here, although this picture may not necessarily be of an actual place. By the time he painted it, Jacob had moved away from the smooth finish of his earlier work and had developed a looser style using thick paint and broad visible brushstrokes.

Key facts

Full title
Three Windmills
Artist
Jacob Maris
Artist dates
1837 - 1899
Date made
1880
Medium and support
oil on canvas
Dimensions
33.7 × 41.3 cm
Inscription summary
Signed; Dated
Acquisition credit
Presented by C. Frank Stoop to the Tate Gallery, 1928; transferred, 1956
Inventory number
NG4399
Location
Not on display
Collection
Main Collection

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

More works by Jacob Maris

A Beach
A Beach
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This beach may be at Scheveningen, close to The Hague, where Jacob Maris settled in the 1870s. A lone fisherman appears to be hauling nets alongside two beached flat-bottomed fishing boats. A few birds are the only sign of wildlife.Maris painted the scene, particularly the sky, with broad visible...
Not on display
A Drawbridge in a Dutch Town
A Drawbridge in a Dutch Town
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The everyday quality of this simple functional bridge may have particularly appealed to Jacob Maris, and he paints it without embellishment or narrative incident. He also made a watercolour of the same view in 1875, but in this oil painting he emphasises the bridge’s monumentality by increasing t...
Not on display
A Girl feeding a Bird in a Cage
A Girl feeding a Bird in a Cage
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This small painting on wood was painted in the same year as A Girl Seated outside a House, also in the National Gallery’s collection. The two paintings have several common features. These include a young girl (probably the same model) wearing jewellery, seen in profile on the right of the picture...
On display elsewhere
A Girl seated outside a House
A Girl seated outside a House
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When this small painting on wood was bequeathed to the National Gallery it had the title Vespers, although it had previously been titled Young Girl with Flowers. The composition is very similar to a picture titled Sunday Afternoon, which Jacob Maris had painted a few years earlier in 1863. That p...
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A Windmill and Houses beside Water: Stormy Sky
A Windmill and Houses beside Water: Stormy Sky
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This painting is typical of the views of the Dutch countryside that Jacob Maris produced throughout his career. A single windmill provides the only interruption along the flat horizon in a picture that is dominated by a stormy sky – the painting previously had the title La Tourmente (‘Turmoil’ or...
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A Young Woman nursing a Baby
A Young Woman nursing a Baby
Jacob Maris
Jacob Maris was 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 1871.The woman is almost certainly Maris’s wife. Their first child, Guillaume, was born i...
Not on display