What was Lot 77? The quietest little red and brown picture you ever saw, 8½ by 11½ inches; “a town [in the words of the catalogue] on the farther bank of a river; standing well above the red roofs of the houses are seen four windmills; a bridge crosses the river on the right; a barge and raft lying against the bank; a peasant woman in the foreground.” Such is “The Four Mills” of Matthew Maris, that strange, exclusive genius, most remarkable of the three Maris brothers. Matthew was born in 1835, and is therefore now an old man. He lives in lodgings in London, far from Holland and its mills and canals and sweeping sky: solitary and sad, with a few marvellous classics to his name, and on the walls of his sitting-room some dreadful oleographs which he will not ask the landlady to remove for fear of hurting her feelings. Here he lives, painting a little every day,—but they are pictures for no one to see,—and writing (I am told) some of the best letters of our time. The old age of artists! Hazlitt truly knew what to write about.
Matthew Maris has lived in England ever since he left Paris after the war. He even carried a rifle in that struggle, but it is characteristic of his gentle nature that he refused to load it. When he gave up painting for the public I know not. But the latest work that I know—that exquisite picture entitled “Butterflies”—a little blue girl lying in the grass, which seems to make much of both Whistler and Albert Moore insincere and even unnecessary, is dated 1874. It was exhibited in London again in 1909, with sixteen other of his works, including the adorable “Enfant Couchée” and one of the low-toned Montmartre souvenirs.
Such is the painter of Lot 77, which left his easel in 1871 and was then sold with difficulty for 100 francs, or four English sovereigns, or twenty American dollars, to M. Goupil, of Paris, who, it is recorded, threw in a little friendly lecture on the folly of painting “such unsaleable stuff.” Well, here it was now, Lot 77, “The Four Mills,” thirty-eight years older, and beautiful beyond description, with an appeal to the deeper nature of the connoisseur such as I cannot put into words. “Why,” I asked an artist, as we stood before it on the day before the sale, “why is it so good?” “Partly,” he said, “because he never wanted to show how cleverly he could paint. Everything has its true value. It is so simple and so sincere.” But this, of course, is not all. There is also the curious and exquisite alchemy of the painter’s mind; and how much of the painter is in this particular masterpiece may be gathered from the circumstance that (as I happen to know) it does not represent any real Dutch town at all but was an invention of his own. The Four Mills exist only on this canvas and in Matthew Maris’s strange and beautiful brain.
Lot 77. We have seen what the dealer gave the artist for it—100 francs. It then passed to Lord Powerscourt, and it was from his collection that Sir John Day bought it for £120. It was now, therefore, being sold for the third time.
“Lot 77. What shall I say for a start, gentlemen?”
“A thousand guineas? Thank you. A thousand guineas for this picture.”
“Eleven hundred.”
“Twelve.”
“Thirteen.”
“Fourteen.”