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Lot 31
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Circle of Nicolaes Maes (Dordrecht 1634-1693 Amsterdam)
Circle of Nicolaes Maes (Dordrecht 1634-1693 Amsterdam)
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The Poultry Vendor


Oil on canvas
74.5 by 92.1 cm.


Following his training with Rembrandt in Amsterdam in the early 1650s and
before devoting himself exclusively to portraiture after c.1660, Maes executed
an important series of genre scenes in the mid and late 1650s. The majority of
these are domestic subjects and several depict vendors at the doors of wealthy
homes or on the street such here. The identification of his genre scenes between
1656 and 1660 has proven extremely difficult, in view of the fact that Maes? style
changes fundamentally; Maes?s earliest works have religious subjects and exhibit
a strong Rembrandtesque style, his genre scenes are much more idiosyncratic
and individualistic in execution and style. Although the domestic intimacy as well
as the warm colours and strong lighting of these works still seem to reflect the
legacy of Rembrandt.


The opinions of the experts on Maes?s late genre scenes tend to diverge: Werner
Sumowski who wrote the six volume??bible? on the Rembrandt pupils, published
our painting in 1994 as Maes. In 2000 Krempel publishes the present painting as
a Nicolaes Maes in his monograph devoted to Maes. Fred Meijer considers this
work to be a work from the studio or direct circle of Maes with also the possibility
that it is a collaboration between Maes and a (young) Justus de Gelder (1650?
after 1707), Maes?s stepson. De Gelder was three and half years old when his
mother married Maes, and must have been a pupil of his stepfather. Apparently
De Gelder did not settle as a painte and there is only one signed painting known
by De Gelder, Children on a bridge, dated 1671; see under Literature below,
Krempel 2000, p. 40, reproduced fig. 439).


A nice detail is the highly fashionable street saleswoman on the right: she is
sporting a black round dot on her left cheek. The placing of these false beauty
marks, or patches, on the face began in ancient Rome, and became a widespread
fad across Europe from the late 1500s through the 1600s. A dark mole that
occurs naturally on the face is sometimes called a beauty mark. Fashionable men
and women imitated this natural mark by sticking black beauty patches on their
faces. The fashion is thought to have originated as a way of disguising pox scars
and other blemishes, but gradually developed coded meanings. Subtle signals
to others at parties and other social events: A patch near the mouth signified
flirtatiousness; one on the right cheek denoted marriage; one on the left cheek
announced engagement, maybe this is the case for the woman in the painting
here, etc.


Provenance:
Sale, London, Sotheby?s, 3 July 1997, lot 11 (as attributed to Nicolaes Maes);
With Gebr. Douwes Fine Art, Amsterdam, by 1998 (as Justus de Gelder,
exhibited at TEFAF 1998 as such).
Exhibited:
Hoorn, Westfries Museum, Food for thought: food and drink in seventeenthcentury
Dutch art and life, 10 December 2010 ? 13 March 2011, p. 61,
reproduced on p. 60 (as Nicolaes Maes, circa 1659).
Literature:
W. Sumowski, Gem?lde der Rembrandt-Sch?ler, Landau/Pfalz 1983, vol. VI, p.
3731, no. 2374, reproduced p. 3985 (as Nicolaes Maes, c. 1656/58);
W. W. Robinson, The early works of Nicolaes Maes, 1653 to 1661, Ph. Diss.
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1996, no. C24, reproduced (as
?Follower of Nicolaes Maes?);
L. Krempel, Studien zu den datierten Gem?lden des Nicolaes Maes (1634-1693),
Petersberg 2000, p. 355, no. D7, and p. 356, reproduced fig. 59, and under cat.
no. D11 (under ?undated early works by Maes - c. 1653-1662?; as Nicolaes Maes,
c. 1659?).

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