A group portrait of a mother and her two children by a fountain in a park: she seated small full length, wearing a red and black dress holding her daughter, dressed as a shepherdess on her lap, her son standing small full length, climbing a goat nearby

Details

Nicolaes Maes (1634-1693)
A group portrait of a mother and her two children by a fountain in a park: she seated small full length, wearing a red and black dress holding her daughter, dressed as a shepherdess on her lap, her son standing small full length, climbing a goat nearby
signed and indistinctly dated N.MAES/16.. lower right
oil on canvas
96.4 x 76.4 cm

Provenance

A.Camphausen, Cologne, circa 1876-94.
Anon.Sale, Lempertz Cologne, 18 May 1996, lot 1090, plate 9.

Literature

C.Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné, etc., VI, 1915, p.596, no.552.('sehr charakteristisches Bild der Uebergangszeit').
L.Krempel, Studien zu den datierten Gemälden des Nicolaes Maes (1634-1693), 2000, p.292, no.A49, fig.102, pl.VIII (as dated 1661).

Exhibited

Cologne, Kunsthistorische Ausstellung, 1876, no.86.

Special notice

Christie's charge a buyer's premium of 20.825% of the hammer price for lots with values up to NLG 200,000. If the hammer price exceeds the NLG 200,000 then the premium is calculated at 20.825% of the first NLG 200,000 plus 11.9% of any amount in excess of NLG 200,000.

Lot Essay

As pointed out by W.Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, 1983, p.1951, by 1660 Maes had given up genre subjects and entirely specialised in portraits. In this speciality he would become the most succesful artist of his generation, first in Dordrecht and, from 1673 in Amsterdam.
The present picture, which has been dated to 1661, see under literature, belongs to a small group of portraits of the early 1660's, in which Maes stylistically abandoned from the Rembrandtesque towards a more classicist type of portrait, influenced by Jan Mijtens and other portrait painters in The Hague.
The landscape in the background and the figures at small full lengths, are reminiscent of Mijtens.
The small boy climbing the goat in the foreground, could be inspired by Maes' predecessor in Dordrecht Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp.

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