George Maroniez was born in Douai in 1865 and died in Paris in 1933. He was the son of a sugar manufacturer in Montigny en Ostrevent near Douai (Nord). He made a career as a judge until 1905, but at the same time was also a painter and photographer; he studied first under Pierre Billet and then under Adrien Demont-Breton, son-in-law of the famous Jules Breton.

Maroniez was a member of the Salon des Artistes Francais from 1889. (Honorable Mention 1891, 3rd Medal 1905, 2nd Medal 1906.) At the age of 22, he started exhibiting paintings of port scenes of Brittany and Holland. Defying the label of "marine painter", he filled his genre scene paintings with Flemish Realism. Using a luminous...