NICOLAES MAES (Dordrecht 1634 – Amsterdam 1693)
A Woman Ringing a Doorbell with Three Children
signed in the lower right N Maes with the first three initials of Maes conjoined
oil on canvas
32 x 24 inches (81.2 x 60.9 cm.)
PROVENANCE
Dr. Luchtmans, Muys van Leen and Lamme, Rotterdam, April 20 – 22, 1816, lot 88
Peter Norton (art dealer), London, until 1833
Charles – August – Louis – Joseph, Duc de Morny (1811 – 1865)
Estate of Le Duc de Morny, Laneuville, Paris, May 31 – June 12, 1865, lot 57, (with swine painted over) where purchased by
Heim
Edward Speelman, London, circa 1960
Anonymous sale, Christie’s, London, June 11, 1971, lot 30, (with swine removed) where bought by
Brod
Galleria Caretto, Turin, 1985
Anonymous sale, Sotheby’s, New York, January 12, 1989, lot 41, illustrated (as attributed to Nicolaes Maes, with swine removed) where purchased by
Oliver T. Banks, Brooklyn, New York, and by descent to
Private Collection, Brooklyn, New York, until the present time
LITERATURE
John Smith, “Nicolaes Maes, The Dead Pig” in A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, volume 4, Richards, London, 1833, p. 248, no. 21, (stating “Painted with the breadth and effect of Rembrandt.”)
“Vente de la Galerie Morny” in La Chronique des Arts et de la Curiosité, no. 167, Paris, June 4, 1865, p. 202
“Revue des Ventes Publiques” in Moniteur des Arts, Revue Permanenté des Expositions et des Ventes Publiques, no. 489, Paris, June 9, 1865, p. 12
H. Mireur, “1865 – Duc de Morny” in Dictionnaire des Ventes D’Art, volume 5, Maison D’Éditions D’ Oeuvres Antiques, Paris, 1911, p. 5
Hofstede de Groot, “Nicolaes Maes, Outside the Butcher’s Shop” in A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century Based on the Works of John Smith, volume 6, Macmillan, London, 1916, p. 487, no. 42
Werner Sumowski, “Nicolaes Maes” in Drawings of the Rembrandt School, volume 8, Abaris Books, New York, 1989, pp. 3982 -3983, no. 1768a, (illustration of the drawing of the young girl in the center of the three children in the painting)
Werner Sumowski, “Nicolaes Maes, Des Geschlachtete Schwein“, (painting with swine as unlocated) and “Kopie“, (with swine removed) in Gemälde der Rembrandt – Schüler, volume III, Edition PVA, London / Pfalz,1986, pp. 1957, 2021, no. 1375, p. 2101, no. 1375, (original composition illustrated)
Written communication from William W. Robinson dated April 16, 1992 in which he confirms the authenticity of the painting with the swine removed.
Werner Sumowski, “Corrigenda und Addenda“ in Gemälde der Rembrandt – Schüler, volume VI, Edition PVA, London / Pfalz, 1994, p. 3629, III, Kat – no. 1375, (stating the painting with the swine removed as a copy)
William Walker Robinson, The Early Works of Nicolaes Maes 1653 to 1661, Ph.D dissertation Harvard University, May 1996, volume I, p. 273, nos. C – 27, C- 27a, (as both the original and the painting with the swine removed to be a follower of Nicolaes Maes; and the drawing of the young girl in the center of the three children by a follower of Nicolaes Maes), volume II, C – 27 b, (illustrated with the swine removed)
Léon Krempel, Nicolaes Maes, Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersburg, 2000, p. 362, no. D 42, illustration no. 34, (the original composition), (both the original composition and painting with the swine removed as authentic works by Nicolaes Maes, dating it circa 1654 – 1656)
Dr. Herman Colenbrander, “Het ‘groenwyff’ van Bartholomeus van der Helst” in Face Book Studies on Dutch and Flemish Portraiture of the 16th – 18th Centuries, Primavera Pers, Leiden, 2012, p. 398
Marjorie E. Wiesman, “Slaughtered Pig” in The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 4th edition, 2017, pp. 3, 5, fn. 3, (both the original and painting with the swine removed as by Nicolaes Maes)
“Rembrandt’s pupil Nicolaes Maes is one of the most beloved masters of Dutch 17th century painting … with his original representations of everyday life, Nicolaes Maes was one of the most innovative painters of the Dutch Golden Age. His domestic scenes have been a source of inspiration for painters such as Pieter de Hooch and Johannes Vermeer”.[1] (from the website of the Mauritshuis)
In this painting a young woman wearing a large straw hat stands on a doorstep pulling a chain to ring the bell of a large stone house. Her head is turned directly to face the viewer. Behind her are three children. The young girl on the left is riding a hobby-horse, while the child in the center hides her hands beneath her apron, and the young boy on the right blows up a bladder. In the distance the St. George’s Gate of Dordrecht (St. Jorispoort, now destroyed) marks the entryway into the town. This painting, out of approximately forty works of genre, formed part of a group of about ten scenes that Maes executed set in the open air usually centered around a doorstep where something is being sold.[2] Léon Krempel, the expert on Nicolaes Maes, dates this painting to circa 1654 – 1656.[3] These works were done “in a short period of unprecedented artistic creativity“ which stopped at the end of the 1650s when Maes changed to exclusively painting portraits. “Although Maes’ switch has often been lamented, the relative rarity of these paintings make them so special”.[4]
By the eighteenth century there was a growing interest in the small group of genre paintings by Maes and their sales started to be recorded internationally. Many ended up in aristocratic collections. Ariane van Suchtelen, curator at the Mauritshuis, described in the Maes exhibition catalog for the National Gallery, London show of 2019 the availability of these works as “gradually exhausted”.[5]
This painting followed a similar path but with some additional twists and turns in regard to the repeated appearance and disappearance of the slaughtered pig in the center of the composition. When the painting was sold in Rotterdam in 1816 the subject was clearly stated, noting the carcass of a pig attached to a ladder. Yet when the painting was sold from the estate of the Duke de Morny in 1865 the detailed cataloging describes the painting as it presently appears, due to the pig at this point having been painted over. After it was purchased by Heim at the sale, its whereabouts are unknown until it is with the art dealer Edward Speelman in London nearly 100 years later, circa 1960. At this point the pig had reappeared, but shortly afterwards prior to the painting’s sale by Christie’s London in 1971 the center had been cut and the rest of the area painted over to form the composition now seen. The painting’s original measurements were 101.6 x 78.7 cm. (40 x 31 inches).
This understandably caused confusion in the scholarship. Werner Sumowski in 1986 published the painting as two separate works, the one with the swine as original and the other as a copy. Following suit in 1989 Sotheby’s New York auctioned the work as attributed to Nicolaes Maes where it was recognized and purchased by Oliver T. Banks. A scholar, art critic and consultant, as well as the author of detective novels dealing with art crimes, wrote about this painting “I became more and more convinced that it might be Maes’ lost original … In the black light booth at Sotheby’s my heart nearly pounded through my chest”.[6] In a confirming letter from 1992 to his family the Maes scholar William Robinson described his visit to reexamine the work:
“It recalled one of the most effective lessons in connoisseurship ever taught to me. After years of studying Maes’s work, I saw your painting in the viewing at Sotheby’s and quickly dismissed it as a copy of the original, formerly with Speelman, from which the unsavory detail of the slaughtered carcass had, I suppose, been omitted. But Oliver took the trouble to look more carefully, and when we saw the picture together at your apartment, he showed me how he had established that this was indeed the vandalized original. It was an afternoon I will never forget, in part because of my horror at learning that barbarous people still do such things to pictures, but mostly because of my admiration for Oliver’s perspicacity.”[7]
The painting’s original subject of a slaughtered pig was intended as a vanitas allegory. The young boy blowing up a bladder represents the concept of homo bulla which compares the fragility of life to that of a soap bubble.[8] Due to its transformation the painting now presents a charming view of life in Dordrecht at mid-century, with the bladder an object of fascination for the children, soon to be a ball or balloon commonly played with during the period.
Gerrit Maes, a well-to-do silk merchant and soap manufacturer in Dordrecht and his wife Ida Herman Claesdr were the parents of Nicolaes Maes. Maes first studied drawing in Dordrecht with a “mediocre master” (“een gemeen meester”) and then went to Amsterdam to study painting with Rembrandt. He probably was in Amsterdam from around 1646 – 1647 until 1653, when he returned to Dordrecht to marry Adriana Brouwers. His work of the 1650s most closely reveals the influence of Rembrandt particularly in a small group of religious and mythological works, but also in his scenes of domestic genre, with the employment of his master’s brushstrokes, coloration and chiaroscuro, Maes invokes a stateliness not often associated with such subjects. Colors favored are red, brown, white and black, laid on with fluid brushstrokes that leave outlines slightly blurred heightening the atmospheric effect.[9] His earliest portraits also date from the 1650s but show little of Rembrandt’s style, rather reflect such Dordrecht artists as Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp, Aelbert Cuyp, and Samuel von Hoogstraten. These works are characterized by a limited palette, austere backgrounds, frontal poses, restrained gestures and guarded expressions. After circa 1660 the remainder of his career was devoted exclusively to portraiture.[10]
In the 1650s painters such as Govaert Flinck, Adriaen Hanneman and Jan Mytens introduced the Flemish style of portraiture based on Anthony van Dyck into the northern Netherlands, from which Maes’s mature style dateable to the 1660s slowly evolved. After the deaths of the Amsterdam portrait painters Bartholomeus van der Helst in 1670 and Abraham van den Tempel in 1672; Maes seeing an opportunity for increased patronage moved there in 1673 and the gamble worked. Houbraken recorded “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”.[11]
[1] “Nicolaes Maes – Rembrandt’s versatile pupil” at Mauritshuis, mauritshuis.nl.
[2] Ariane van Suchtelen in Nicolaes Maes Dutch Master of the Golden Age, National Gallery Company, London, 2019, p. 367.
[3] Léon Krempel, Nicolaes Maes, op.cit., p. 362.
[4] Ariane van Suchtelen, op.cit., pp. 70 – 71.
[5] Ibid, p. 71.
[6] Contemporaneous notes by Oliver T. Banks, Brooklyn, 1989.
[7] Written communication from William W. Robinson, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, dated April 16, 1992.
[8] Marjorie E. Wiesman, op.cit., p. 3.
[9] Biographical information taken from William W. Robinson, “Nicolaes Maes” in The Dictionary of Art, From Rembrandt to Vermeer, 17th Century Dutch Artists, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2000, pp. 201 – 203; Walter Liedtke, “Nicolaes Maes” in Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, volume I, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, pp. 430 – 431; and Ariane van Suchtelen in Nicolaes Maes, Dutch Master of the Golden Age, op.cit., pp. 13, 25, 30, 33, 55.
[10] William W. Robinson, “Nicolas Maes” in The Grove Dictionary of Art, op.cit., pp. 201 – 203; and Walter Liedtke, op.cit., pp. 430 – 431.
[11] William W. Robinson, “Nicolaes Maes” in The Grove Dictionary of Art, op.cit., pp. 202 – 203.