From Nicolaas Maes to Daan Muhlhaus

Thursday, May 17, 2012

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Nicolaes Maes, Cornelis van der Meulen, Daan Mühlhaus

Famous Dutch Painters from Dordrecht, Ancient Capital of Holland

Part 14

35. Nicolaes Maes
36. Cornelis van der Meulen
37. Daan Mühlhaus

Note : Please do not email me with technical questions about paintings and their age and origin because I am not an expert but I only have gathered information about the Painters from the Netherlands and specially from Dordrecht.

Dordrecht is not only known as the oldest city and ancient capital of Holland but also for the many famous painters who were born or lived in Dordrecht during the late Middle ages and later centuries.

On the next pages you can find many works from these famous painters who were responsible for many styles of paintings and they immortalized the daily life and landscapes in the 15th to 19th century. Most of their masterpieces are nowadays part of collections in museums all over the world and of which many can be seen in the local Dordrechts Museum.

Nicolaes Maes

Dordrecht 1634 - Amsterdam. 1693

Nicolaes was the son of the prosperous Dordrecht merchant Gerrit Maes and his wife Ida Herman Claesdr from Ravestein. He learnt to draw from a ‘mediocre master’ (Houbraken) in his native town before he studied painting with Rembrandt in Amsterdam. His training in Rembrandt’s studio must have taken place between 1648/50 and 1653.

By December 1653 Maes had settled in Dordrecht and made plans to marry, while a signed and dated picture of 1653 confirms that the 19-year-old artist had completed his training and embarked on an independent career. In 1658 he bought a house in Dordrecht Maes continued to reside in Dordrecht until 1673.

Maes’s few pictures of biblical subjects and all his approximately 40 genre paintings date from c. 1653 to c. 1660. Though indebted to Rembrandt’s example, the early religious works exhibit a precocious originality in the interpretation of the sacred text and iconographic tradition. For instance, in the Expulsion of Hagar (1653, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) Hagar’s inconsolable response to her dismissal and the characterization of Ishmael as a prematurely embittered outcast mark it as one of the most poignant renderings of a theme that was especially popular among Rembrandt’s students. This and other biblical pictures are of cabinet size, Christ Blessing the Children (London, National Gallery) is Maes’s only religious work with life-size figures.

For a brief period in the mid-1650s Maes ranked among the most innovative Dutch genre painters, owing to his talent for pictorial invention and for devising expressive poses, gestures and physiognomies. He adapted Rembrandt’s brushwork and chiaroscuro to the scenes of domestic life that provided the favorite subject-matter for genre artists working in the third quarter of the century. The poetic deployment of light and shade and the adeptly designed figures invest his paintings of interior scenes with women absorbed in household tasks with an atmosphere of studious concentration. In pictures of spinners, lacemakers (e.g. The Lacemaker, 1655, Ottawa, National Gallery) and mothers with children, dating from 1654 to 1658, household work assumes the dignity and probity claimed for it by contemporary authors of didactic literature on family life. Maes also executed a small group of works that show everyday events taking place on the doorstep of a private house. Some depict milkmaids ringing the doorbell or receiving payment for a pot of milk (e.g. London, Apsley House), others represent boys asking for alms from the residents.

As in the interior scenes, Maes’s pictorial gifts transformed these mundane transactions into events of solemn dignity. Another type of genre painting from the mid-1650s shows a single, nearly life-size female figure in half or three-quarter length. An elderly woman says grace before a modest meal, prays amid vanitas symbols or dozes over a Bible, exemplifying, respectively, spiritual vigor and spiritual lassitude in old age. In many of his pictures, for example the Woman Plucking a Duck of 1655 or 1656 (Philadelphia, PA, Museum of Art), Maes developed an innovative approach to the representation of interior space.

He was among the first Dutch genre painters to depict the domestic interior not as a shallow, three-walled box but as a suite of rooms. His new disposition of domestic space resulted primarily from the narrative requirements of these paintings. While he demonstrably perused perspective handbooks, he resorted neither to a mathematically constructed space nor—with one exception—to trompe l’oeil illusionism. Maes pursued his experiments for only a brief period (1655–57), but his achievement exercised a decisive influence on the Delft painters Johannes Vermeer and Pietsser de Hooch and thus had lasting consequences for the representation of interior space in 17th-century Dutch painting. While concentrating on his genre and history paintings, Maes embarked on a productive, 35-year career as a portrait painter.

During the second half of the 1650s, when his output of subject pictures gradually diminished, his production of portraits steadily increased. Some 25 single, pendant and group portraits from the period 1655–60 have been preserved. However, from c. 1660 until the end of his career, Maes worked exclusively as a portraitist. He settled in Amsterdam in 1673, making a bid to fill the vacancy left by the deaths of the portrait specialists Bartholomeus van der Helst and Abraham van den Tempel. Soon, wrote Houbraken, ‘so much work came his way that it was deemed a favor if one person was granted the opportunity to sit for his portrait before another, and so it remained for the rest of his life’.

Hundreds of surviving portraits from the 1670s and 1680s corroborate Houbraken’s report. Most are pendants in one of two favorite formats, a smaller rectangular canvas with a half-length figure within a painted oval, and a larger canvas with a three-quarter-length figure, usually shown leaning against a fountain, rock or column. In both types, the setting is often a garden or terrace before a sunset sky. There are several group portraits of children or families, depicting the sitters full length in landscape settings, but only one corporate group, the Six Governors of the Amsterdam Surgeons’ Guild (1680/81, Amsterdam, Rijksmueum), is known.

During his 40-year career, Maes’s painting technique evolved continuously, but his exceptional skill with the brush never faltered. In the genre and history pictures of the prolific period 1653/55, his color, chiaroscuro and brushwork owe a clear debt to Rembrandt’s work of the mid-1640s, particularly to the latter’s Holy Family in the Carpenter’s Shop (1645, St Petersburg, Hermitage). Maes restricted his palette to blacks, browns, whites and reds and employed techniques ranging from a meticulous ‘fine painting’ style in the description of wooden furniture or a wicker cradle to a grainy—occasionally even pastose—application of richly graduated tones in the execution of fabric and flesh. After the middle of the decade, he increasingly favored a clearer light, smoother textures and more definite contours.

Maes’s mature style developed gradually during the 1660s in response to the Flemish mode of portraiture developed by van Dyck and introduced into the northern Netherlands in the previous decade by such artists as Govaert Flinck, Adriaen Hanneman and Jan Mijtens. From the early 1660s onwards, Maes regularly employed staging and accessories derived from Flemish portraiture. Although Houbraken reported that Maes once travelled to Antwerp, direct contact with Flemish painting contributed less to his development than his study of works by Mijtens, whose coloring and technique evidently inspired the glistening reds and blues and brilliant brushwork of his later paintings.

Despite the general trend of his style, in some of his most sympathetic portraits of the 1660s Maes continued to utilize a plain background and a subdued palette (e.g. the Portrait of a Widow, 1667, Basle, Kunstmuseum). The portraits of the 1670s and 1680s generally feature the same imaginary garden or architectural setting with a foreground composed of columns, fountains, terraces and billowing curtains, but they exhibit a novel repertory of graceful poses and refinements in technique and coloring. The pale, solidly modeled Countenances preserve—according to Houbraken’s reliable testimony—an accurate likeness of the sitter, but the brilliantly rendered hair and clothing increasingly dominate the image. Satiny fabrics in a broader and brighter range of reds, blues, oranges, golds and violets shimmer with dashing, scumbled highlights, while the elaborate curls of the period’s long hairstyles are described with a breathtaking show of tonal painting in greys and browns (e.g. the Portrait of a Young Man, Munich, Alte Pinakothek). About 160 drawings by Maes have survived, making him one of the few outstanding Dutch genre painters of his generation whose practice as a draughtsman can be partially reconstructed. For the compositional projects Maes used a varietssy of media, red chalk, pen and ink and combinations of chalk and wash or ink and wash. Most are cursory sketches, for example the study in pen and wash (Berlin, Kupferstichkab.) for The Lacemaker (1655, Ottawa, National Gallery). The figure studies also exhibit a wide varietssy of media and techniques. They range from spare contours delineated with the pen or brush to exquisitely refined studies in red chalk (e.g. another study, Rotterdam, Boymans–van Beuningen, for The Lacemaker) to broadly pictorial drawings executed in a combination of chalk, ink, wash and bodycolour.

While early collectors of Maes’s subject pictures remain unidentified, the known sitters in his portraits attest that in this field Maes enjoyed from the outset the patronage of Dordrecht’s political and mercantile élite. Jacob de Witt, whom he portrayed in 1657, was a member of the city’s Old Council and the father of Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt, the political leader of the United Provinces. A contract of 1658 records that Maes acquired a house from Job Cuijter in exchange for a cash payment and the portrait of Cuijter with his family. In 1659 or 1660 Maes painted a portrait of Jacob Trip (The Hague, Mauritshuis), the first of several pendant portraits with Trip’s wife Margaretha de Geer (both of whom were portrayed by Rembrandt about the same time). Among Holland’s wealthiest families, the Trips and de Geers amassed fortunes from Swedish iron mines and the manufacture of armaments.

During his last years in Dordrecht and during his Amsterdam period, Maes continued to work for a varied clientele at the highest social levels, including the Utrecht University professor of theology Gijsbert Voet, the preacher Cornelis Trigland; Hieronymus van Beverningk, Treasurer-General of the United Provinces, diplomat and one time close confidant of Johan de Witt; the Amsterdam burgomaster Gerrit Hendriksz. Hooft and the Lieutenant-Admiral of Zeeland. A few of these portraits were reproduced in prints.

Nicolaes Maes in museums in The Netherlands

Portrait of Margaretha de Geer

Nicolaes Maes, 1669
Oil on canvas 116 x 85 cm
Dordrechts Museum

Like Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp and Rembrandt (1606-1669), Nicolaes Maes also portrayed the couple Jacob Trip and Margaretha de Geer. The Trip's were among the richest and most authoritative families of the 17th century. The 85-year-old Margaretha was widowed eight years when Maes painted this monumental portrait of her. The black clothing is in sharp contrast with the white cuffs and broad ruff. This type of collar was at the beginning of the century well-worn, but after 1640 only rarely. As a woman of age Margaretha did not followed the latest fashion.

The Lyra-man

Nicolaes Maes
Oil on canvas 99 x 108,3 cm
Dordrechts Museum

The Lyra-man plays a "draailier", a stringed instrument with buttons for different tones. The musician is in this painting accompanied by a boy who picks up the money. In the 17th century street musicians were often depicted as blind, shabby old men. Around 1640 Rembrandt (1606-1669) painted musicians as a kind of old man rather than as a sinister outcast. The public wasportrayed as well-mannered, good citizens. Also on the Lyra-man of Maes we see well-dressed audience. The musician and his companion stabbing in their bedraggled clothing sharp vagrants out of the public good.

Portrait of four children as mythological figures

Nicolaes Maas, 1674
Oil on canvas 103,5 x 124,5 cm
Dordrechts Museum

This painting, on the first look, shows a happy childhood but it has a sad undertone. In the center is a child carried by an eagle. The reason goes back to the myth of Ganymedes. Supreme Jupiter - in the shape of an eagle - abducted this young man, to whom he had become in love, to the mountain Olympus. In the seventeenth century, the story lost much of its sexual overtones and got a Christian interpretation. The myth was often used in connection with the death of a child, Ganymedes was seen as the fault child soul that rises to God.

The Handmaid

Nicolaes Maes
Oil on panel 57,3 x 41,6 cm
Dordrechts Museum

In the late 1650s Maes was often inspired by everyday life. Sometimes he gave a moralistic turn to some topic. On this panel, he painted a servant who is on the back of the fish market seduced to a chat. Her time away, they do not see a dog that excessive focus on the salmon fillet, which she had just bought. Back in Dordrecht - after his training with Rembrandt (1606-1669) in Amsterdam, Maes made this kind of scenes to learn and fun and to quickly establish a reputation.

Portrait of Jacob de Witt

Nicolaes Maas, 1657
Oil on panel 74,7 x 60,5 cm
Dordrechts Museum

Jacob de Witt was mayor of Dordrecht and the father of Johan and Cornelis de Witt. Johan became Raeds-pensionaris (President) of the Republic of the Seven United Provinces and was, together with his brother Cornelis brutally murdered in the Haque, August 1672, by the followers of the young William III of Orange.

Self portrait

Nicolaes Maas, c. 1685
Oil on canvas and panel 63 x 50 cm
Dordrechts Museum

The eavesdropper

Nicolaes Maas, 1657
Oil on canvas on panel 92.5 x 122 cm
Dordrecht Museum

A rhythm game with looking through different areas, marks this composition. On Maes's refined way the audience is involved in the show. The girl calls the audience with her finger to be silence. She has discovered the love couple down the stairs. She makes the audience part of her secret and thus complicity. Her finger lifted also to the bust of the Roman goddess Juno's marriage. This suggests that the adultery is continuing.

A Woman Spinning

Nicolaes Maas, 1655
Oil on panel
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Nicolaes Maes in museums in the United Kingdom

A Young Boy with His Dog in a Landscape

Nicolaes Maes, 1662
Oil paint on board h368 x w457 mm
Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, Brighton UK

A little girl rocking a Cradle

Nicholas Maes, c.1655
Oil on panel 40.4 x 32.6 cm
National gallery, London

A Woman scraping Parsnips, with a child standing by her

Nicholas Maes, 1655
Oil on panel 35.6 x 29.8 cm
National gallery London

Interior with a Sleeping Maid and her Mistress (The Idle Servant)

Nicholas Maes, 1655
Oil on panel 70 x 53.3 cm
National gallery, London

The kitchen scene in Maes's painting is complemented by the room beyond, where figures sit at table. The strong lighting in the foreground shows the artist's continuing debt to Rembrandt. It highlights the figures of the maid and the mistress, the standing figure gesturing towards the idle servant with an array of dishes at her feet and a cat stealing food on the ledge beside her.

Christ blessing the Children

Nicholas Maes, 1652/53
Oil on canvas 218 x 154 cm
National gallery London

This subject is told in several of the Gospels. Christ, in response to the complaints of his disciples, justified his blessing the children with the words: 'Suffer little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven'. New Testament (Matthew 19: 13-15). In the theological debates between Calvinists and Lutherans against the Anabaptists this text was used to justify infant baptism. Children, although seemingly innocent and certainly unaware of the significance of the event, need to be baptised in order to achieve salvation from original sin, with which all humans come into the world. The composition is focused on Christ's hand placed in blessing over the head of the girl in the centre. Strong light falls from the left across her features and illuminates from the side the crowd gathered behind her. The figure on the extreme left appears to be a portrait, and may well be a self portrait by Maes. The painting was acquired in 1866 as a Rembrandt, but is now generally agreed to be an early work by Maes, dating from the early 1650s, not long after his training with Rembrandt.

Portrait of an Elderly man in a Black Robe

Nicholas Maes, 1666
Oil on canvas 89.5 x 71.4 cm
National gallery London

The old man represented in this portrait, seated a chair in front of a curtain that has been pulled to the side, has not been identified. He is wearing a 'tabbaard', which is a long black gown that is lined with fur. This together with the book he is holding suggests that he may be scholar.

Portrait of Jan de Reus

Nicholas Maes, 1670s
Oil on canvas 79 x 62.5 cm
National gallery London

Jan de Reus (about 1600 - 1685) was a Rotterdam silk merchant. He was burgomaster of Rotterdam eight times, and a director of the Dutch East India Company from 1658. The identification of the sitter is made by comparison with a copy of the portrait by Pietsser van der Werff.

Portrait of a Man in a Black Wig

Nicholas Maes, 1680
Oil on canvas 47.6 x 38.7 cm
National gallery London

This is a half-length portrait of an unidentified sitter in an oval surround. It was formerly attributed to Caspar Netscher, but is now recognised as a work by Maes, who painted a number of portraits of this type in his later years.

Lady in black dress

Nicholas Maes
oil on canvas 48.7 x 38.4 cm
Bowes Museum, County Durham, UK

The subject is shown standing by a narrow arched window through which a landscape can be seen. She is wearing a black dress with full lace half sleeves and small ruff. Her right hand rests on a table clutching pink flowers, left arm across bust. The carnation that the sitter holds in her hand often appears in marriage portraits as a symbol of fidelity, whereas the roses on the table could refer to beauty and to the passage of time.

The Listening Housewife (The Eavesdropper)

Nicolas Maes
Oil on canvas 84. x 70.6 cm
The Wallace collection, London

The Virtuous Woman

Nicolas Maes, c. 1655
Oil on canvas 74.7 x 60.5 cm
The Wallace collection, London

Still Life of Fruit in a formal Garden

Nicolaes Maes, Inscribed: A. Cuyp
oil on canvas; 56 x 72 cm
The Ashmolean museum of art, Oxford

Apart from an early painting of a branch of peaches, this is the only still life which is generally attributed to Maes. The addition of Cuyp's name was probably inspired by similarities between this painting and works by Abraham Calraet which were, at one time, attributed to Cuyp.

A Man holding a Carnation to a Woman's Nose: An Allegory of the Sense of Smell

Nicolaes Maes, late 1650s
oil on canvas; 59 x 62 cm
The Ashmolean museum of art, Oxford

This painting must date from before c. 1660 when Maes abandoned his early career as a painter of genre scenes and religious works and devoted himself to paintin portraits. The dark, rich colour and heavy brushwork indicate a debt to Rembandt, with whom Maes is said to have studied in the late 1640s.

Portrait of a Venerable-looking Old Man

Nicholas Maes, 1666
oil on canvas 87.6 x 69.2 cm
Bowes Museum, County Durham, UK

The subject of the portrait is a Captain of the Civic Guard of Dordrecht.

Nicolaes Maes in museums in other Countries of Europe

Mocking of Christ

Nicolaes Maes, 1650s
The Hermitage St-Petersburg

Portrait of a Young Woman

Nicolaes Maes, 1678
The Hermitage St-Petersburg

Hermanus Amija

Nicolaes Maes,1683
H. : 0.65 m. , L. : 0.53 m
Musée du Louvre, Paris

Husband of Catherine de Vogelaer. Painted around 1683, date of marriage of the couple. Typical example of aristocratic portraits by Maes executed according to a standardized formula.

Catherine de Vogelaer

Nicolaes Maes,1683
H. : 0.65 m. , L. : 0.53 m
Musée du Louvre, Paris

Daughter of a Secretary of the city of Amsterdam, wife of Hermanus Amija. Painted around 1683, date of marriage of the couple. Typical example of aristocratic portraits by Maes executed according to a standardized formula.

Children bathing

Nicolaes Maes, 1683
H. : 0.72 m. , L. : 0.91 m
Musée du Louvre, Paris

The attribution to Maes was sometimes challenged - a little prematurely - to a close relative of the artist, Justus de Gelder. Starting early, circa 1655/60. Representation apparently anecdotal but no doubt responsible for some moralizing allusions to certain keywords related to emblems (the child based on a floating tree trunk, to illustrate the frailty of existence built on uncertain foundations, imprudent swimmer who falls into the water because it relies too much knowledge and neglects any external assistance.

Portrait of a Woman

Nicolaes Maas, 1666-67
Oil on canvas, 91 x 73 cm
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Portrait of a Man

Nicolaes Maas, 1666-67
Oil on canvas, 91 x 73 cm
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

The naughty drummer boy

Nicolaes Maas, c. 1655
Oil on canvas, 62 x 66 cm
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Old Woman Dozing

Nicolaes Maas, 1656
Oil on canvas, 135 x 105 cm
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

Portrait of Four Children

Nicolaes Maes, 1657
Oil on canvas, 150 x 112 cm
Groeningen Museum, Bruges

Portrait of a Woman

Nicolaes Maas
Oil on canvas, 89,6 x 71,2 cm
Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent

Old Woman Peeling Apples

Nicolaes Maas, c. 1655
Oil on canvas, 5 x 50 cm
Staatliche Museen, Berlin

Portrait of a Gentlemen

Nicholas Maes
Oil on canvas 54.6 x 49 cm
Private collection, Dusseldorf

Portrait of Sara Ingelbrechts (1636-1711)

Nicolaes Maes,1675
Oil on canvas 76,5 x 66 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Gemäldegalerie

The Apostle Thomas

Nicolaes Maas, 1656
Oil on canvas
Staatliche Museen, Kassel

Portrait of Margaretha de Geer, Wife of Jacob Trip

Nicholas Maes, c. 1660
Oil on canvas, 88 x 68 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Portrait of Justus Criex

Nicholas Maes, 1666
Oil on canvas, 109 x 92 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Christ before Pilate

Nicholas Maes, 1649/50
Oil on canvas, 216 x 174 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Portrait of Jaob Trip

Nicholas Maes, c. 1660
Oil on canvas, 88 x 68 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Nicolaes Maes in museums in the USA

The Lace maker

Nicholas Maes, 1665/60
Oil on canvas; 17 3/4 x 20 3/4 in. (45.1 x 52.7 cm)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Dutch Gentleman

Nicholas Maes
oil on canvas sight 42 1/2 x 33 1/2 in. (107.9 x 85.1 cm
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Formerly attributed to Ferdinand Bol

An Old Woman Dozing over a Book

Nicolaes Maes, c. 1655
oil on canvas: 82.2 x 67 cm
National galley of art, Washington DC

Portrait of a Lady

Nicolaes Maes, 1676
oil on canvas 116 x 91 cm
National galley of art, Washington DC

Interior with a Dordrecht Family

Nicolaes Maes, 1656
Oil on canvas 112.4 x 121 cm
Norton Simon museum, Pasadena

One of Rembrandt's most renowned students, Nicolaes Maes worked in his native city of Dordrecht for many years prior to establishing a studio in Amsterdam. He had begun painting portraits by 1656, the date of the present work. Maes specialized in domestic scenes and maintained a very individual color scheme throughout his work. The lacquered finishes of black and brown contrast luminously with the clear reds visible on the fruit and the mother's dress. Strong contrasts of light and dark are another prominent feature in Maes' technique and recall his tutelage under Rembrandt.

Agatha Bicker

Nicolaes Maes, c. 1675
Oil on panel oval 37.5 x 24.8 cm
Norton Simon museum, Pasadena

Dirck Alewijn was the Sheriff of Amsterdam, a title that was more honorary than active. His luxuriant wig and his wife's fine pearls and dress attest to their affluence.

Dirck Frederiksz Alewijn

Nicolaes Maes, c. 1675
Oil on panel oval 43.2 x 30.5 cm
Norton Simon museum, Pasadena

Dirck Alewijn was the Sheriff of Amsterdam, a title that was more honorary than active. His luxuriant wig, and the fine pearls and dress of his wife, Agatha Bicker, attest to their affluence.

Portrait of a Lady by a Fountain

Nicolaes Maes, c. 1665
oil on canvas 85 x 69 cm
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh USA

Portrait of a Lady

Nicolaes Maes, 1675
opaque water-base paint mounted on vellum mounted on cardboard 55 x 43 cm
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh USA

Adoration of the Shepherds

Nicholas Maes, 1660
Oil on canvas 47 x 12 x 37 x 34 in.
The Getty museum, Los Angeles

Portrait of Helena van Heuvel

Nicolaes Maes, c. 1675/79
Oil on canvas 44.3 x 34.3 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Portrait of Mary Stuart

Nicolaes Maes, 1677
Oil on canvas 26-5/8 x 22-1/4 in
Timken museum of art, San Diego

By 1660, Nicolaes Maes, Rembrandt's best-known pupil, developed a fluid style of painting that readily lent itself to portraiture.

This portrait may be of Mary Stuart, daughter of James, Duke of York, and Anne Hyde. In 1677, the year this work was painted, fifteen-year-old Mary Stuart married William III of Orange, Stadtholder of the United Provinces of the Netherlands. She later became Mary II when he became William III. They ruled England and were popularly known as William and Mary.

Portrait of Anna Hofstreek

Nicolaes Maes, 1674
Oil on canvas 114.9 x 92 cm
Ringling Museum of Art, Florida

The account Keeper

Nicolaes Maes, 1656
oil on canvas 66 x 53.7 cm
Saint Louis art museum, St-Louis USA

The Lacemaker

Nicolaes Maes, 1655
oil on oak 57.1 x 43.8 cm
National gallery of Canada, Ottawa

The subject of the lacemaker is frequently found in Dutch painting of this period; Maes painted no fewer than twelve examples. The intense concentration of the woman and the organized setting serve to underline the virtues of domesticity. The artist's use of chiaroscuro ¿ distributing the light and shade to focus on the figure ¿ reveals the influence of his teacher, Rembrandt.

Nicolaes Maes in museums in Private collections

Family Portrait

Nicholas Maes, c. 1675/76
Oil on canvas 153.1 x 170.2 cm Private collection
On tour around the world

Portrait of Gentlemen, Three-Quarter Length, in a Brown Tunic with a Red Cloak in a Wooded Landscape, at Sunset

Nicolaes Maes, 1676
oil on canvas 54.9 x 46 cm
Private collection

In this accomplished portrait, Nicolaes Maes presents the viewer with a confident young man with a disarmingly open gaze and jaunty demeanour. Although painted centuries ago, the portrait possesses a powerful immediacy and timeless appeal.

Portrait of Hendrick Meulenaer

Nicolaes Maes
Canvas, 43.5 x 32.5 cm
Private collection

Portrait of an Unknown Woman, probably Anna or Maria Meulenaer

Nicolaes Maes
Canvas, 43.5 x 31 cm
Private collection

A Portrait of a young Man in an orange and gold Tunic with a blue Cloak in a feigned Oval

Nicolaes Maes
Oil on Canvas 18 x 14 inches (45.7 x 35.5 cm
Private collection

Eavesdropper with a Scolding Woman

Nicolaes Maas, 1655
Oil on panel, 46,3 x 72,2 cm
Private collection

Cornelis van der Meulen

Dordrecht 1642 - Stockholm 1692

Cornelis van der Meulen was in the fifties a pupil of Samuel van Hoogstraten. After a few years he had worked in Dordrecht, he departed in 1679 to Stockholm. There he remained until his death working as a court painter of the Swedish king. The biggest part of his work is still in Sweden. Van der Meulen, the creator of a series of copy paintings "trompe l'oeil" pieces and Still-lifes. There is also a view of Stockholm from him, that is constructed with great precision. Some have argued that using an optical measuring instrument as the Camera Obscura was formed because of this painting.

Trompe l'oeil letter bord

Cornelis van der Meulen
doek op board 48 x 58,2 cm
Dordrechts museum

What is real and what is painted? Because the optical illusion this type of fraud is called "trompe l'oeil. The theme of the trompe l'oeil letterbox has largely its origin from Dordrecht, in which Samuel van Hoogstraten played a large role. In his painters-book he advised students to focusing on the appearance of flat objects on flat operated subjects, because ‘ook eer meede ingeleit, wanneer vorsten of vorstinnen bedroogen wierden.’ (when more experienced you can even trigger Royalty).Van der Meulen followed the advice of his mentor and as court painter in Sweden e had indeed princes among its admirers.

A Vanitas Still Life o a Skull, a guttering Candle, a tortoiseshell Mirror, a Book, a Statue and a pack of Cards

Cornelis van der Meulen, 1688
oil on canvas 58.4 x 47.3 cm
Private collection

Daan Mühlhaus

Dordrecht 1907 - Dordrecht 1981

After several jobs as a factory worker and an advertising artist, Daan Mühlhausen began painting around 1930. As an example he used the Dordrechts paintings in the Museum. In addition, he had important contacts with Cor Noltee, A. P. DishTrak, M.P. Reus and Roland Larijs. Especially with Noltee he often painted outside and he made small paintings "to remember the things that I wanted to make at home." He painted naturalistic, in a manner as he looked around, in sweeping and color keys. Together with the other painters he belonged to a group that is being described as Dordtse Impressionists.