Twee vletten before 1917

Matthijs Maris made this pencil drawing, "Twee vletten," or "Two Punts," while living and working in the Netherlands. It is interesting to note the institutional context for Maris's work. We know, for example, that Maris studied at the Antwerp Academy, an institution that promoted the value of academic study in the production of art. How, then, do we understand a relatively simple drawing like this? Maris was among a number of Dutch artists who self-consciously reacted against the detailed realism favored by the Academy. In this drawing, we see a soft and somewhat vague representation of two boats afloat on the water. It seems that he valued capturing the subjective experience of a scene over an exact rendering of it. Historians use documents from the time, such as letters and exhibition reviews, to better understand the institutional and social contexts of works like this one.