Who Is Marie Cécile Thijs and What Is Her Artistic Style?

Updated

Marie Cécile Thijs is a Dutch photographic artist whose work centers on portraits of people, animals, flowers, and food, all rendered in a distinctive surreal, poetic, and tranquil visual language. Her studio site, mariececilethijs.com, presents her as "Artist of the Year 2024" and notes that her works are held in the collections of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Lisser Museum LAM, Museum Rotterdam, Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Richmond, and the National Museum of History and Art Luxembourg. If you want to understand what kind of photographer she is and what her images look like before exploring her portfolio, the essentials are below.

Background and recognition

Thijs is described on her site as a Dutch artist. Two facts anchor her standing in the art world:

  • Artist of the Year 2024 — a designation featured prominently on her homepage.
  • Museum collections — her work is included in the collections of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Lisser Museum LAM, Museum Rotterdam, Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Richmond, and the National Museum of History and Art Luxembourg.

These institutional holdings matter because they signal that her photography is treated as collectible fine art rather than commercial or editorial imagery.

Artistic style: surreal, still, and poetic

The site describes her as creating "a poetic atmosphere of tranquillity," with stillness as the key element. Her signature is a surreal quality applied across very different subjects — people, animals, flowers, and food — so that a portrait of a person and a still life of fruit feel like they belong to the same visual world.

In practice, this means:

  • Stillness over motion — compositions feel paused, quiet, and deliberate rather than candid or dynamic.
  • Surreal atmosphere — familiar subjects are staged in ways that feel slightly dreamlike or uncanny.
  • A consistent signature — the same mood carries across genres, which is why the site frames all four subject categories as bearing "her specific signature."

What she photographs

Subject What to expect
People Portraits carrying the same surreal, tranquil signature
Animals Animal subjects treated with the same poetic stillness
Flowers Floral still lifes in the same visual language
Food Food imagery that reads as fine-art still life rather than commercial photography

How to decide whether her work is for you

  • If you collect or follow fine-art photography, the museum collection list is the strongest signal of where she sits in the field.
  • If you are drawn to quiet, surreal imagery rather than documentary or street photography, her stillness-first approach is the main appeal.
  • If you want to see the style rather than read about it, the works themselves are the only reliable reference — the site's own description is a summary, not a substitute for viewing the images.

For current availability, pricing, or exhibition details, check the site directly, since those specifics are not covered in the material summarized here.