Jan Mankes - Mother, 1911

Jan Mankes (1889-1920)

Mother

1911

Signed lower right

Oil on canvas on panel

17 x 14 cm

Condition:

In very good condition

Provenance:

Kunsthandel Esher Surrey, The Hague 1920; Utrechtse Kunsthandel / J. van Es, Utrecht 1920; A. le Cosquino de Bussy, Utrecht 1920-1954; J. Boetes, Hoogkerk; Christie’s, 2017; heirs of Jan Mankes; Galerie Frank Welkenhuysen.

Literature:

Alied Ottevanger, Jan Mankes, 1889-1920 (Oeuvre Catalogue) - Sch 44.

Additional information:

Jan Mankes is regarded as one of the most sensitive artists in Dutch art history. His quiet view of landscape, animals and still life earned him the nickname “the most tranquil painter in the Netherlands”. From his peaceful surroundings he observed nature with an almost monastic concentration: every bird, flower and play of light was reduced to an intimate, concentrated essence.

Mankes’s oeuvre is small but exceptionally coherent. It is a world of silence, detail and poetic clarity that continues to touch viewers deeply. This was also demonstrated by the recent attention devoted to his work at Museum Belvédère and Museum Arnhem, where his art was shown to great effect. With extremely thin brushstrokes and subtle, often luminous colour accents, he captures animals in their natural surroundings, flowers at the point between bloom and decay, and loved ones such as his wife Annie Mankes Zernike. This restrained melancholy, together with a sense of fragility and transience, runs as a quiet undercurrent through his work.

Despite Jan Mankes’s early death at just thirty, his reputation has endured. Mankes’s drawings, prints and paintings are rarely offered on the market and are treasured by museums including the Rijksmuseum, Museum Belvédère, Museum MORE, Museum Arnhem and Museum Møhlmann. His oeuvre remains an anchor for anyone seeking quiet, attention and purity in art.