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Lot Essay
Among the most talented of Rembrandt’s pupils, Nicolaes Maes settled in Dordrecht after training with the master in Amsterdam between 1648⁄50 and 1653. In his early career, Maes painted biblical episodes and genre scenes that convey the influence of Rembrandt’s works of the 1640s. By 1660, however, Maes began to paint portraits of Dordrecht and, following a move in 1673, Amsterdam’s elite. Maes’s talent was so celebrated that his biographer Arnold Houbraken wrote: ‘so much work came his way that it was deemed a favour if one person was granted the opportunity to sit for his portrait before another, and so it remained for the rest of his life.’
Wigbold Slicher, Lord of the Manor of Westerbeek, was born in Amsterdam on 27 June 1627 and died 5 June 1718. He is documented as a lawyer in Amsterdam in 1650, Commissioner of Bankruptcy in 1653, Commissioner of Petty Affairs in 1654, Town Clerk from 1655-69 and Receiver-General of the Amsterdam Admiralty between 1669 and 1713. Slicher married Elisabeth Spiegel on 6 June 1651, with whom he had thirteen children. Maes’s pendant portrait of Spiegel is now untraced, but, like the present painting, is known through a partial copy in pastel by his descendant Raimond Slicher (private collection). At his death, Slicher’s estate was valued at 600,421 guilders, making him one of the richest men in Amsterdam. Some years earlier, Slicher sat with his wife and one of his children for a portrait in the guise of Paris, Venus and Amor by the fashionable Amsterdam portrait painter Ferdinand Bol, a work that is dated 1656 and is today in the Dordrechts Museum.
In 2018 Dr. William W. Robinson endorsed the attribution to Maes on the basis of photographs and suggested a date of circa 1674-76.
Wigbold Slicher, Lord of the Manor of Westerbeek, was born in Amsterdam on 27 June 1627 and died 5 June 1718. He is documented as a lawyer in Amsterdam in 1650, Commissioner of Bankruptcy in 1653, Commissioner of Petty Affairs in 1654, Town Clerk from 1655-69 and Receiver-General of the Amsterdam Admiralty between 1669 and 1713. Slicher married Elisabeth Spiegel on 6 June 1651, with whom he had thirteen children. Maes’s pendant portrait of Spiegel is now untraced, but, like the present painting, is known through a partial copy in pastel by his descendant Raimond Slicher (private collection). At his death, Slicher’s estate was valued at 600,421 guilders, making him one of the richest men in Amsterdam. Some years earlier, Slicher sat with his wife and one of his children for a portrait in the guise of Paris, Venus and Amor by the fashionable Amsterdam portrait painter Ferdinand Bol, a work that is dated 1656 and is today in the Dordrechts Museum.
In 2018 Dr. William W. Robinson endorsed the attribution to Maes on the basis of photographs and suggested a date of circa 1674-76.