Simon Maris in zijn atelier aan de Keizersgracht in Amsterdam Possibly 1905 - 1946

This photograph captures Simon Maris in his studio on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam, taken by Sigmund Löw. What I find so compelling is the way that the photograph doesn’t just present a scene, but also suggests a way of looking, much like a painting. Notice the quality of light and shadow, the chiaroscuro, that draws you in, and the way Löw uses the tonal range to pick out details from the darkness. The eye is drawn to the painting on the easel, a portrait of a woman, but our attention then shifts to the figure of Maris himself. The way he sits there in the painting is so natural, a sense of lived-in process. It makes me think about the work of someone like Édouard Vuillard, who paints his own domestic life, or Pierre Bonnard, both of whom use painting to observe and record. Art has to allow for ambiguity. It should not be something definite with a fixed meaning, but something that allows multiple interpretations.