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Nicolaes Maes, Self-Portrait, c. 1685, oil on canvas, Dordrechts Museum, 1928 Purchase

Nicolaes Maes

Dutch, 1634 - 1693

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Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., “Nicolaes Maes,” NGA Online Editions, https://purl.org/nga/collection/constituent/1503 (accessed March 19, 2024).

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Biography

Maes was born in Dordrecht in January 1634, the son of a well-to-do soap manufacturer and merchant.  The details and dates of his early career are not precisely known, but Houbraken tells us that Maes’ first instruction in drawing came from “an ordinary master” (een gemeen Meester), probably a local artist in Dordrecht. At some point in the late 1640s, however, he went to Amsterdam and studied with Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606 - 1669), becoming one of that master’s most accomplished pupils.

By the end of 1653, Maes was back in Dordrecht, where he was betrothed on December 28 to Adriana Brouwers, the widow of a preacher. They were married there on January 13, 1654, and had three children (one of whom died young). The influence of Rembrandt, and specifically the style and subject matter of his work of the 1640s, continued in Maes’ work after his return to Dordrecht. This impact is especially apparent in the case of his drawings, which are often difficult to distinguish with certainty from those of Rembrandt. Maes produced almost all of his small-scale paintings of domestic interiors during the mid-1650s, one of the two types of picture for which he is best known.

By 1656 Maes began painting portraits, and he eventually worked exclusively as a fashionable portrait painter. He sought to infuse his depictions of Dutch merchants with an elegance comparable to that found in paintings by Sir Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577 - 1640) and Sir Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599 - 1641), and Houbraken relates that Maes actually traveled to Antwerp to study the works of Flemish masters. His own portraits, however, always retained a more literal likeness of the sitter than did those of Van Dyck.

Houbraken attributed the stylistic changes evident in Maes’ painting during the 1660s to market pressure, saying that Maes abandoned Rembrandt’s way of painting “when he took up portraiture and discovered that young ladies would rather be painted in white than in brown.”[1] At this time, Maes not only altered his style but also completely changed his signature from block letters to a more elegant form. Were it not for the existence of transitional paintings signed in the earlier manner but showing signs of the artist’s later style, one might well conclude that the late portraits were executed by an entirely different N. Maes.

In 1673 Maes moved to Amsterdam, where he died in December 1693.

[1] Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols. (The Hague, 1753. Reprint, Amsterdam, 1980), 2:274.

Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.

April 24, 2014

Artist Bibliography

1753
Houbraken, Arnold. De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen. 3 vols. in 1. The Hague, 1753 (Reprint: Amsterdam, 1976): 2:273-277.
1890
Veth, G. H. "Aanteekeningen omtrent eenige Dordrechtsche Schilders. Nicolaes Maes." Oud Holland 8 (1899): 125-142.
1907
Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century. 8 vols. Translated by Edward G. Hawke. London, 1907-1927: 6(1916):473-605.
1924
Valentiner, Wilhelm R. Nicolaes Maes. Stuttgart, 1924.
1979
Sumowski, Werner. Drawings of the Rembrandt School. 10 vols. Edited and translated by Walter L. Strauss. New York, 1979-1992: 8(1984):3951-4489.
1983
Sumowski, Werner. Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler. 6 vols. Landau, 1983: 3:1951-2174; 6:3731-3737.
1984
Sutton, Peter C. Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting. Edited by Jane Iandola Watkins. Exh. cat. Philadelphia Museum of Art; Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin; Royal Academy of Arts, London. Philadelphia, 1984: 239-242.
1991
MacLaren, Neil. The Dutch School, 1600-1900. Revised and expanded by Christopher Brown. 2 vols. National Gallery Catalogues. London, 1991: 1:239.
1995
Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1995: 159-160.
1999
Ghandour, N. "Research on the biography of 17th-century Dutch painter Nicolaes Maes." Oud Holland 113, no. 4 (1999): 217-220.
2000
Krempel, León. Studien zu den datierten Gemälden des Nicolaes Maes (1634-1693). Studien zur internationalen Architektur- und Kunstgeschichte 9. Petersburg, Germany, 2000.

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