Jan Mankes - Rose and Lily in a Glass, 1912

Jan Mankes (1889-1920)

Rose and Lily in a Glass

Signed lower right

1912

Oil on canvas

21.8 x 18 cm

Condition:

In very good condition.

Provenance:

Famille Van Beuningen.

Literature: Alied Ottevanger, Jan Mankes, 1889-1920 (Oeuvre catalogue) - Sch 76.

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 ‘Holland’s most tranquil painter’. From his peaceful surroundings he observed nature with almost monastic attention: 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 resonate deeply. His work has received renewed attention at Museum Belvédère and Museum Arnhem, where his work was recently shown again. With very thin brushstrokes and subtle, often bright accents of colour, he depicts animals in their natural surroundings, flowers at the point between bloom and decay, and loved ones such as his wife Annie Mankes Zernike. That restrained melancholy, the awareness of fragility and transience, runs like a quiet undercurrent through his work.

Despite his early death at just thirty, Mankes’s reputation lives on. His 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 looking for calm, attention and purity in art.