MAES, Nicolaes

The range of Mae’s domestic subjects is large. They show women praying, spinning, sewing, making lace, preparing food, or teaching children - all virtuous activities related to the centrality and sanctity of the home in Dutch society.

The subject of this painting was exceedingly popular in Rembrandt’s circle and with Protestant collectors. Hagar, the Egyptian hand maiden of Sarah was the mother of Ishmael, Abraham’s first son. When Isaac, Sarah’s son, was born Ishmael mocked his younger brother so that Sarah asked Abraham to banish him, together with his mother. Abraham provided them with bread and a bottle of water and sent them off into the desert of Beersheba. When the water was spent Hagar put Ishmael under a bush to die and then sat some way off, weeping. But an angel appeared, by tradition the archangel Michael, and disclosed a well of water near by, so they were both saved. Two scenes, the banishment, and the appearance of the angel are common in 17th century Italian and Dutch painting.

The present canvas is the earliest of Maes’s known paintings. He painted it when he was beginning to work independently after studying with Rembrandt for two or three years. In conception, the picture depend upon examples by Rembrandt, while the manner of execution is similar to that of other Rembrandt pupils in the 1650s.

The pendant portraits of Admiral Jacob Binkes and his fianc�e Ingena Rotterdam were painted by Maes. The portraits commemorate the couple’s engagement in 1676. Binkes was one of the most capable and courageous naval officers of the 1660s and 1670s. He sailed for the West Indies, shortly after the engagement, never to see the Netherlands or his fianc�e again. He died in Tobago in December 1677. In 1685, Ingena Rotterdam married Pieter d’Orville in Amsterdam, and she died there in 1704.

Born in Dordrecht, Maes went to Amsterdam in about 1650 to study with Rembrandt. He was back in his native city by 1653 and stayed until 1673, when he returned to settle in Amsterdam. By 1654 he had abandoned Rembrandt’s way of painting in favour of small domestic interiors depicting the life of women and children. They differ from similar subjects painted by de Hooch in their extensive use of glossy black and warm reds, and the strong contrasts between light and dark, but some share de Hooch’s interest in views into another room or space - although we don’t know of any direct connection between the two painters. From 1660 Maes confined himself to portraiture, in time adopting the elegant French style favoured in Holland in the latter part of the century.

The attribution of this huge picture has been the subject of much debate, but it is now generally accepted as an early work by Maes painted either during his time in Rembrandt’s studio or just after. One of his two surviving preparatory compositional sketches is loosely based on Rembrandt’s famous Hundred Guilder Print. Both works illustrate a passage from the Gospel of Saint Matthew: ‘Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven’ (19:13-14).

In Maes’s picture dark browns and blacks are enlivened with touches of cream and red - most striking in the cheeks of the little girl on whom Jesus has ‘put his hands’ and who turns around shyly and uncomprehendingly, finger in mouth. Her school slate hangs at her side - for these are seventeenth-century Dutch mothers and children who crowd around Jesus, although he, like Saint Peter standing rebuked behind the tree and the man lifting up the child (a disciple removing an infant, or a father jumping the queue?), is wearing ‘timeless’ dress. The young man awkwardly squeezed in at the left is likely to be a self portrait, a reminder that this picture is dated to Maes’s late ‘teens. He has followed all the precepts for monumental narrative painting - the full-length figures on the scale of life, a significant and elevated biblical story, the poses and emotions of all the figures carefully delineated, the lights and darks disposed so as to highlight Jesus and the children - yet something genre-like and sentimental keeps breaking through. Whether because most patrons with space on their walls for a canvas of this size wanted something loftier than the homely figures depicted here, or whether Maes himself realised that ‘history painting’ was not what he wished to do, he was never again to attempt a picture on this ambitious scale.

For four years, between 1648 and 1652, Nicolaes Maes, a native of Dordrecht, was one of Rembrandt’s pupils; indeed, he was one of his most distinguished pupils. At the beginning of his career he faithfully followed his master - like Rembrandt he painted Biblical subjects, developed an intimate manner of expression and employed warm colouring - but later, disengaging himself from Rembrandt’s entourage, he became popular with the citizens of Dordrecht as a painter of genre scenes and portraits. His portrayal became more elegant but at the same time more superficial, his use of lines harder, his colouring cooler.

This picture is an early work which, when it was acquired for the Esterh�zy collection at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was ascribed to Rembrandt. It is an unusual example of Maes’s work, partly because the subject has been taken from the New Testament - not the artist’s usual practice. The two works which come closest to this picture are Christ Blessing Children in the National Gallery in London and Christ Mocked, once in St. Petersburg, and we know of no other works by the artist which show any relationship to this picture. There is no reliable evidence as to the circumstances in which it was painted, though, hypothetically, it might be the painting by Maes mentioned by seventeenth-century sources as being in collections in Amsterdam and Dordrecht.

It is assumed that the boy at the left is the self-portrait of the young artist. The head of Pilate and that of the man with red beret are also portraits.

Maes’s fame rests primarily on his genre paintings of the intimate life of women and children made at Dordrecht during the 1650s. In this witty picture a maid quietly smiles at us as she points to the room upstairs, making us complicitous in overhearing a scolding mistress. Maes generated ambiguity by hiding the object of the woman’s wrath with the illusionistic curtain. To the left, utensils have tumbled over, lying idle. By opening the curtain, the painter literally reveals a badly managed household: the maid spends more time listening than working, and the mistress does not create domestic harmony.

The pendant portraits of Admiral Jacob Binkes and his fianc�e Ingena Rotterdam were painted by Maes. The portraits commemorate the couple’s engagement in 1676. Binkes was one of the most capable and courageous naval officers of the 1660s and 1670s. He sailed for the West Indies, shortly after the engagement, never to see the Netherlands or his fianc�e again. He died in Tobago in December 1677. In 1685, Ingena Rotterdam married Pieter d’Orville in Amsterdam, and she died there in 1704.

This domestic scene - a superb example of the Dutch genre tableau - also has, though less obviously for a modern viewer, a moralising purpose as an allegory of sloth or laziness. An old woman has fallen asleep while reading. In her heavily veined right hand, resting on an open book on her lap, she holds a pair of reading glasses. Here the artist not only depicts tellingly a universally recognisable scene of human behaviour. Using pictorial language which would have been immediately understood by a 17th century Calvinist, he expresses, via a number of objects in the room, a jjudgment - and a highly negative one at that - about this behaviour. This verdict contrasts sharply with the positive feelings of modern viewers, who are inclined to project their emotion or tenderness into the artist’s intentions when looking at his model. In particularly older viewers, who will soon be called to give a reckoning of their deeds at the Last Judgment, are sharply reminded of the severe punishments that await them after their death if they forsake their daily duties. A key on the wall points revealingly to a page in an open Bible on the table, where the name of Amos, a prophet of doom, is clearly readable. An hourglass in which time is passing props up the heavy book. Neither age nor tiredness, following on a spiritual effort, can excuse the capitulation to a human weakness. The call to be constantly awake and vigilant is directed not only at the spiritual individual but also at citizens in their daily activities.

On the corner of the red cloth-covered table, a lace cushion, with light falling onto it, draws our eye. This symbol of domestic industry has been pushed aside by the woman. This deeper meaning was repeated and supplemented in other paintings with similar motifs from the same period, Experts date this early work, in which Rembrandt’s influence can be clearly felt, at around 1656.

Nicolas Maes was active in Rembrandt’s studio in the late 1640s, and his early works show his teacher’s approach to style and subject. Canvases such as Old Woman Peeling Apples suggest that later Maes was making a small step toward the Fabritius brothers’ forceful, individual concern with line and light.

The reddish-orange glow of the palette of this canvas and its subtle yet expressive chiaroscuro effects reflects Maes’s intimate knowledge of Rembrandt’s work.

The painting is from the first period of the artist. It is signed and dated lower left. The frame is probably original.

There is a pendant of the painting (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) depicting Marten, the brother of the sitter of the present painting. Hendrick Meulenaer (1650-1704) was a merchant in Amsterdam, director of Levantine Trade.

The sitter was a rich merchant at Dordrecht who commissioned all famous portraitists of the period to paint his portrait. The last one was executed by Rembrandt in 1661. Maes was influenced by the style of Rembrandt when executing this portrait. The companion-piece of the painting represents the wife of Jacob Trip and it is also exhibited in the Budapest museum.

Maes executed this portrait during, or immediately after, his visit to Antwerp. In this period he already moved away from the style of Rembrandt and became influenced by Flemish painters, especially Jacob Jordaens whom he visited in Antwerp.

This is the companion-piece of the protrait representing Jacob Trip. Mrs. Trip was also portrayed by Rembrandt.

Until about 1660 Maes painted portraits in the style of his teacher Rembrandt. From 1660 he started to concentrate on the type “portrait histori�” in which the sitter slipped into the role of a figure from mythology, literature or history.

The present portrait shows a confident young man, three-quarter length, in a brown tunic with a red cloak in a wooded landscape, at sunset. Maes’s portraits of this period clearly favour red, gold, brown, ochre and russet tones, all of which were very much in vogue towards the end of the seventeenth century. He is clearly influenced by the paintings of Sir Anthony van Dyke who decades earlier mastered the skill of portraying his subjects with casual elegance and timeless grace by generalising dress details and focusing on the lustre and richness of the fabrics.

This portrait and its companion piece depict a married couple. The portraits demonstrate that from the 1660s, Maes was influenced by the French style of portraiture, characterized by a refined and distant air.

Maes studied at Rembrandt from 1650 to 1654 and his early works show the influence of his master. After visiting Antwerp, where he saw the works of Rubens, Van Dych and Jordaens, his style changed and he became a popular portraitist.

This small portrait on copper is one of the rare miniatures by Maes. The sitter was identified as Marghareta de Geer, wife of the wealthy Dordrecht merchant Jacob Trip. Portraits of the couple were also painted a few years later by the artist.

A portraitist and painter of domestic scenes, Nicolaes Maes began his career as a pupil of Rembrandt, from whom he learned to capture the psychology of his sitters and a tenebrist technique. In his mature period, however, he moved away from Rembrandt’s style and adopted a more detailed technique with a greater interest in anecdotal details.

It was suggested that the painting reveals the influence of Jacob Jordaens, who was visited by Maes on a trip to Antwerp in the 1660s. However, not only Jordaens, but many other Flemish, and by the 1660s, quite a few Dutch artists painted similar portraits of seated and similarly posed sitters with a glimpse of landscape in the background.

This portrait and its companion piece depict a married couple. The portraits demonstrate that from the 1660s, Maes was influenced by the French style of portraiture, characterized by a refined and distant air.

The sitter of this portrait is not identified with certainty, but she is probably one of the sisters of Hendrick and Marten Meulenaer - Maria, who was born in 1658, or Anna, born in 1661. The Pendant portraits of the brothers were painted by Maes in 1675.

Objects or certain motifs in seventeenth-century Dutch paintings were often endowed with a dual function. They serve as perceptible material things, while simultaneously doing something entirely different, namely giving expression to and idea, an intention, a moral, or a condition. In the present portrait, the water from a fountain that sprays or drips on a lady’s extended hand must be understood not only as water but also as a metaphor of the purity of the hand’s owner.

This portrait represents an unidentified young nobleman, three-quarter-length, wearing red with a brown sash, holding a bow and a quiver of arrows, with two dogs in a wooded landscape.

Between 1655 and 1657 Maes produced at least six innovative genre scenes with an “eavesdropper” as a protagonist. The present painting is possibly the last of these variations on the theme and the largest and most ambitious work in this series. The company in the upstairs room at the left is waiting to be served and the lady of the house, richly clad in a fur-trimmed red velvet jacket, descends the stairs with an empty wine glass in her left hand. She smiles out at the viewer, her finger raised to her lips cautioning for silence. She has spotted her maidservant on a lower level being seduced by a man and thus neglecting her duties. The viewer is directly involved in the scenario, and even made an accomplice to it.

Maes made a lasting impression with his genre scenes. His domestic subjects, convincing renderings of interiors and glimpses into adjacent rooms, and expressive use of light and shade influenced artists in Delft, such as Pieter de Hooch and Johannes Vermeer.

The company in the upstairs room at the left is waiting to be served and the lady of the house, richly clad in a fur-trimmed red velvet jacket, descends the stairs with an empty wine glass in her left hand. She smiles out at the viewer, her finger raised to her lips cautioning for silence. The viewer is directly involved in the scenario, and even made an accomplice to it.

The lady of the house has spotted her maidservant on a lower level being seduced by a man and thus neglecting her duties.

This depiction of The Flight of Lot is a rare biblical subject by Nicolaes Maes, who is best known for his genre paintings and portraits. The story of Lot, nephew of Abraham, and his flight from the city of Sodom is told in Genesis (19: 1-28). Two angels, to whom Lot had given hospitality for the night, warned him that God was about to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for their sinfulness, and urged him to flee with his wife and two daughters. The angels warned them not to look behind them as they left “lest they be consumed.” Lot’s wife did not heed their advice and, upon looking back, was turned into a pillar of salt. This painting depicts the moment before this happens, as the angels are seen literally pushing the family along as one daughter frantically gathers food and valuables in a basket, while the other has bundled other belongings in a rug which she carries on her head. Lot’s wife weeps and pulls away from him as he tries to persuade her to come with them.

The angels are seen literally pushing the family along as one daughter frantically gathers food and valuables in a basket.

The range of Mae’s domestic subjects is large. They show women praying, spinning, sewing, making lace, preparing food, or teaching children - all virtuous activities related to the centrality and sanctity of the home in Dutch society. A few of his pictures have veiled erotic allusions and there are some that call attention to vices. A good natured one in the latter category is The Idle Servant.

The protagonist of the picture is a housewife appealing directly to us to witness the sloth of the sleeping servant who not only left her mess of pots and dishes unwashed but allows the cat to snatch a fowl. The painting’s strong chiaroscuro relates it to Rembrandt but Maes’s personal contribution is the emphasis he places upon creating the illusion of interior space in which the scene is set. Here the stress on the expanse of the floor is not fully successful - the pots and dishes are dangerously close to sliding off it.

More importantly, he allows us to look from one room to another where conversing women introduce a minor sub-plot. The Dutch call this a kind of glimpse, a ‘doorkijkje’ (the diminutive of doorkijk = a look or glance). Maes did not invent the motif. It was used expertly as early as the fifteenth century by an artist unimaginatively called Hand G (variously identified as Jan van Eyck, his assistant, or his follower) on a manuscript page that shows St Elizabeth in her lying-in room after the birth of St John the Baptist. Later artists used the motif too, but Maes gave it new life when he painted a number of domestic scenes in settings similar or more elaborate than the one seen in The Idle Servant. All of them share a great sensitivity to the quality of light and atmospheric effects, and some anticipate the glorious interiors painted in Delft by Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch merely a few years later.

The range of Mae’s domestic subjects is large. They show women praying, spinning, sewing, making lace, preparing food, or teaching children - all virtuous activities related to the centrality and sanctity of the home in Dutch society.

This scene depicts a domestic interior. It is a realistic representation of daily life with emphasis on the anecdotal element. On the wall, in addition to the map, is a mirror in which we can see the reflection of the artist painting.

Paintings of women peeling apples, scraping parsnips, and otherwise preparing simple foods were one of several ways in which the Dutch endorsed an ideal of womanhood in middle-class society. The image of a homemaker, content with her modest and diligent life, had moral and religious overtones. This theme can be found, for example, in paintings by Gabriel Metsu, Pieter de Hooch, and Cornelis Bisschop. From the 1650s the motif and similar domestic subjects became fairly commonplace.