Marius Bauer - etching, signed bottom right - No. 64

Marius Alexander Jacques ('Marius') Bauer
The Hague 1867 – 1932 Amsterdam
In the period between 1880 and 1930, many Dutch painters looked for inspiration beyond our national borders. Some artists went very far and traveled to the Orient to capture the exotic life there in images. For example, Willem Hofker, Gerard Adolfs, Willem Dooijewaard and Isaac Israels are painters with oriental subjects in their oeuvre. But the Netherlands' most outspoken orientalist is Marius Bauer. His reputation is based almost exclusively on orientalist representations.

Bauer was a real adventurer. “Yes, it can't be “far” enough for me! And the stranger and more wonderful everything is, the more I enjoy it.” he wrote to his friend, journalist Maurits Wagenvoort. A large number of trips, facilitated by art dealer Elbert Jan van Wisselingh, took Bauer from Europe to Turkey, Palestine, North Africa and the Far East. He probably found his greatest source of inspiration in Constantinople and India. Places that he immediately associated with the stories from One Thousand and One Nights. Bauer later developed the sketches and drawings he made there into etchings, watercolors and paintings. Set up in his characteristic, impressionistic touch. Although his subjects are strictly orientalist, Bauer has always retained something 'Dutch' in his use of color. He has omitted bright displays of color, such as those of the French Orientalists.

The works of Marius Bauer seem shrouded in a hint of dreaminess. Recognizable elements such as well-known buildings, exotic animals and traditional clothing evoke familiar scenes, both for experienced travelers and for people who have not been there. It was precisely these memories and associations that were very important to Bauer. For him, reality was nothing more than a means of inspiration and he preferred to paint from his imagination rather than reality. This also explains the fact that Bauer did not elaborate on the subjects he saw on his travels until a long time afterwards. He himself said that it is not remembering reality that is most difficult, but rather forgetting it.