An art dealer recognized his talent and saw to it that Jacob was able to work in the studio of Hubertus van Hove.

Like many of the Hague School alumni, Jacob Maris had enormous success in the Netherlands and abroad.

After they had earned enough money by copying eight royal portraits, they were able to go to Oosterbeek where they met Johannes Warnardus Bilders, his son Gerard, and others who later play important parts in the Hague School.

When their money was spent, they again moved in with their parents and Jacob took more lessons at the Hague Academy of Art.

His stroke became broader and larger and his use of color became more subdued and directed towards portraying the atmospheric depiction of clouds.

He applies the paint thickly, builds it up, fiddles around and messes with it-all gradually developing a harmony of colors that establishes the major directions.

But the final touch is done with a master stroke, and in the end the entire work is as solid as the tightest drawing.

Also, M. Philippe Zilcken said, No painter has so well expressed the ethereal effects, bathed in air and light through floating silvery mist, in which painters delight, and the characteristic remote horizons blurred by haze; or again, the grey yet luminous weather of Holland, unlike the dead grey rain of England or the heavy sky of Paris.