Jan Mankes - Annie, Reading at a Table by the Light of a Lamp

Jan Mankes (1889–1920)

Annie, Reading at a Table by the Light of a Lamp

Signed lower right

1917–1918

Oil on canvas

38.5 × 29 cm

Provenance:

From the estate of Jan Mankes, through his son Beint Mankes; Mak van Waay Auction House, 1975; private collection, Blaricum.

Literature:

Jelle Bouwhuis and Han Steenbruggen (eds.), Jan Mankes, mooie dingen zijn zoo eenvoudig, exhibition catalogue, Museum Arnhem & Museum Belvédère, 2025, p. 178. Catalogue raisonné no. 25-375.

Exhibited:

Jan Mankes, mooie dingen zijn zoo eenvoudig, Museum Arnhem & Museum Belvédère, 2025.

Additional information:

Jan Mankes is regarded as one of the most sensitive artists in Dutch art history. His quiet observations of landscapes, animals and still lifes earned him the nickname ‘Holland’s most contemplative painter’. From his peaceful surroundings, he observed nature with almost monastic attention. Every bird, flower and play of light was reduced to an intimate and concentrated essence.

Mankes’s oeuvre is small yet remarkably coherent. It is a world of silence, detail and poetic clarity that continues to resonate today. This is reflected in the recent exhibitions at Museum Belvédère and Museum Arnhem, where his work was presented anew. With very thin brushstrokes and subtle, often luminous accents of colour, he depicted animals in their natural surroundings, flowers at the point between bloom and decay, and those closest to him, including his wife Annie Mankes Zernike. A quiet melancholy runs through his work, along with an awareness of vulnerability and transience.

Despite his early death at just thirty years of age, Mankes’s reputation has endured. His drawings, prints and paintings rarely appear on the market. They are treasured by museums including the Rijksmuseum, Museum Belvédère, Museum MORE, Museum Arnhem and Museum Møhlmann. His oeuvre remains a point of reference for anyone seeking tranquillity, attention and purity in art.