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Lot Essay
From 1648 to 1653, Nicolaes Maes trained in the workshop of Rembrandt van Rijn and went on to become one of his most notable disciples. Though his early works owe a stylistic debt to the work of great master, during the 1660s Maes began looking towards the more Flemish mode of portraiture, which had developed under Anthony van Dyck and spread to the northern Netherlands through the work of painters like Govaert Flinck. Maes moved to Amsterdam in 1674, establishing his workshop and quickly becoming a dramatically popular artist in the city. Indeed, as the Dordrecht based painter and writer Arnold Houbraken wrote, 'so much work came [Maes’] 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.'
These portraits, dated by Sumowski to circa 1680, display Maes’s wonderful rendition of fabric and sharp observation of the sitter’s individual physiognomies. Both figures are arranged in typical poses that feature in many of Maes’s portraits from circa 1660 onwards, wearing simple, contemporary clothes placed in idyllic wooded landscapes, and leaning on verdant banks and rocks.
These portraits, dated by Sumowski to circa 1680, display Maes’s wonderful rendition of fabric and sharp observation of the sitter’s individual physiognomies. Both figures are arranged in typical poses that feature in many of Maes’s portraits from circa 1660 onwards, wearing simple, contemporary clothes placed in idyllic wooded landscapes, and leaning on verdant banks and rocks.