Portrait of a Gentleman

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.