Marées, Hans Von

Born Dec. 24, 1837, in Elberfeld, North Rhine-Westphalia; died June 5, 1887, in Rome. German painter.

Marées studied with K. Steffeck in Berlin in 1854 and 1855. Having lived in Italy from 1864 to 1870, he settled there permanently in 1873. Under the influence of Italian Renaissance art, Marees painted murals and sought to achieve lifelike representations (frescoes in the Zoological Station in Naples, 1873-74). He shared the aesthetic views of A. Hildebrand and K. Fiedler (neo-idealism), seeking to embody the dream of the “golden age” of humanity in allegorical images and to invest his works with expressive, purely plastic elements (The Golden Age, two versions, 1879-85, New Pinakothek, Munich).

Marées’s subsequent triptych cycles on mythological themes are marked by clearly arranged masses, rhythmical forms, and rather bright colors; their two-dimensional and linear compositions anticipated art nouveau painting. The artist’s striving for an abstract artistic ideal, based on associations with classical art, introduced elements of cold abstractness into his works (The Judgment of Paris, 1880-81, National Gallery, Berlin; The Hesperides, 1884-87, New Pinakothek, Munich).