Marius Richters artwork • painting • previously for sale Portrait of Catharine, the artist's sister

Marius Richters is seen as a true Rotterdam painter. He derived his motifs mainly from the docks, painting the polders around the port, and was one of the founding members of the Rotterdam avant-garde group ‘De Branding’. His dockyard workers, labourers unloading coal and grain, the shipbuilders, all have a powerful sense of drama to them. The same can be said of his landscapes: endless sweeping vistas under a bright blue sky, or with the sun breaking through – an occasional tree moved by the wind. Even in these landscapes there is always much hard work going on and the suggestion of one endless windswept space is heightened by the insignificance of the figures working in it. For Richters a painting was the embodiment of restrained control. Along with Jan Sluijters, George Hoogerwaard, Huib Luns and Johan Thorn Prikker, he made the famous wall paintings (1918-1919) in the Council Chamber of Rotterdam town hall.