NICOLAES MAES
(Dordrecht 1634 – 1693 Amsterdam)

Portrait of a Young Lady

Signed and dated, lower right: N. MAES / 1672

Oil on canvas,
46 ¾ x 38 ½ inches
(116.8 x 96.5 cm)

PROVENANCE:
with Galerie Charles Sedelmeyer, Paris; where acquired by:
John Wanamaker, Lindenhurst, Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, by 1904; his estate sale, Parke-Bernet, New York, 2 November 1939, lot 50; where acquired by:
Charles Chester Wickwire, Cortland, New York, 1939–1956; thence by descent until 2019

EXHIBITED:
Wanamaker Art Galleries, Wanamaker’s, Philadelphia, by 1928 and until at least 1929.

LITERATURE:
E. C. Siter, Lindenhurst Galleries: Catalogue of the Collection of Pictures by the Old Masters and of the Early English Schools and Mihály Munkácsy, Philadelphia, 1904, pp. 21–22, 27, cat. no. 32.

Paintings and Objects d’art from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Chester Wickwire, New York, 1953, p. 4.

León Krempel, Studien zu den datierten Gemälden des Nicolaes Maes (1634–1693), Petersberg, 2000, pp. 92, 96, 306, cat. no. A 122, fig. 171.

Known to scholars only from black-and-white photographs taken when the painting was in the collection of the celebrated Philadelphia department store magnate John Wanamaker, this elegant portrait of a young lady has recently emerged from a New York family, whose ancestor purchased it at the sale of the Wanamaker Collection in 1939. In excellent condition and with robust coloration, it can now be seen as one of Nicolaes Maes’s finest and most attractive portraits.

Maes trained under Rembrandt from the late 1640s until 1653 and was among his most talented pupils. After he left Rembrandt’s studio in Amsterdam, Maes returned to his native Dordrecht, where he began to paint religious and domestic compositions greatly indebted to his master. However, he soon turned away from genre paintings and by 1660 had devoted himself almost entirely to portraiture. This shift in focus, a response to both the aesthetic and commercial demands of his day, occurred in tandem with Maes’s development towards a more refined, formal style, one associated with the work of Anthony van Dyck. Our portrait is among the earliest portraits Maes painted after undergoing this transformation and is a particularly fine example of the depictions of fashionably attired Dutch citizens for which Maes became known in the following two decades.

Maes portrayed the sitter in three-quarter length, standing in a relaxed but formal pose in a garden setting before a rocky outcrop. The subject’s high status is evident not only from the stately format of the painting—which ranks among the largest female portraits in the Maes’s oeuvre—but also from her impressive pear-shaped pearl earring and the dazzling strand of pearls hung around her neck, signifiers of her wealth and taste. She is dressed in a lavish costume, rendered with a rich palette of burnt orange and soft pink, that both reflects contemporary fashion of the period and possesses a certain timelessness.[1] In the 1670s Maes began to depict his sitters in historicizing costumes that were in tune with the arcadian landscapes in which he placed them.[2] León Krempel has suggested that the sitter’s dress here is one such a l’antique costume, intended to present her as a classical shepherdess (if an unusually well-to-do one).[3] Closely comparable attire, including the shimmering wrap that encircles the figure, appears in other portraits by Maes of this period. The artist repeated the ensemble nearly exactly, but in reverse, in his portrait of Maria Magdalena van Alphen (Fig. 1). This work is one of a series of portraits of the van Alphen family, which present Maria Magdalena and her husband Dirk in classical garb. The similarities in design between the present painting and the portrait of Maria Magdalena van Alphen raise the possibility that our work may also have been paired with a portrait of the sitter’s husband. At the very least, the several allusions to love and chastity found throughout the composition suggest that this portrait was likely commissioned to celebrate her marriage. The sumptuous pearls worn by the sitter serve as emblems of virtue, while the beautifully observed pink rose that she holds in her hand is a symbol of love (Fig. 2). Additionally, the clear water flowing into the fountain basin, seemingly emerging from the edge of the frame, is a reference to her purity. The delicate petals of the rose and the rippling water in the fountain are both treated with great sensitivity and make this portrait especially appealing.

Maes’s tendency to portray his sitters in pastoral landscapes punctuated by vibrantly colored sunsets—here executed in a bold orange—must be viewed within the context of land ownership and social mobility in this period. During the mid-seventeenth century, there was a sudden increase in the number of wealthy burghers seeking to purchase estates in the countryside. Land was greatly valued and in short supply in the Dutch provinces, and ownership of a country estate seemed a natural adjunct to a rise in social status. Even if such a purchase was unattainable, the appearance of land ownership could be achieved in paint. This led to an increased demand for exterior views in portraits, and along with this, references to antiquity and the imagery of pastoral literature, as in the present work.[4] From a stylistic standpoint, Maes’s portraits are indebted to the new vitality and visual language that van Dyck infused into the genre of portraiture in the seventeenth century. Arnold Houbraken, the painter and biographer of Dutch Golden Age artists, claimed in his De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen that Maes had in fact traveled to Antwerp to study portraits by van Dyck and Peter Paul Rubens.[5] More likely, however, Maes had encountered this innovative style locally, through the works of Jan Mijtens and Adriaen Hanneman, who introduced the Flemish style of portraiture into the northern Netherlands beginning in the 1650s.[6] In the present painting, the pose of the figure, the flowing drapery, and the expressive brushwork reflect the influence of van Dyck and his followers. However, unlike van Dyck who tended to idealize his sitters, Maes has carefully articulated the young lady’s features, creating an image of remarkable presence. It is no surprise that Houbraken wrote of Maes that he knew of no painter before or after him who was more skilled at capturing a sitter’s likeness.[7]

Our portrait is prominently signed and dated 1672 in the lower right of the canvas with what has been termed the artist’s Schnörkeltypus [curlicue-type] signature, which he employed primarily in the years 1669–1674 (Fig. 3).[8] Although the identity of the sitter has been lost to history, she almost certainly hailed from Dordrecht, as our portrait was completed the year before Maes’s move from his native city to Amsterdam in 1673.[9] There his career blossomed following the deaths of the portraitists Bartholomeus van der Helst in 1670 and Abraham van den Tempel in 1672, and in response to the presence of wealthy patrons and foreign visitors to the city.[10] Houbraken noted that after Maes’s move to Amsterdam, “so much work came his 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.”[11]

The present painting is an especially important example by the artist, as it dates from a pivotal moment in Maes’s career. This portrait is one of the first Maes produced in the highly refined and vibrant style that both cemented his success in Amsterdam and defined the remainder of his career. It is also one of the last portraits that Maes painted in the period before departing from Dordrecht, during which time he produced relatively few paintings. In 1672, Louis XIV launched an offensive against the Dutch provinces in an attempt to bring them under France’s rule. This war, known as the Third Anglo-Dutch War, lasted until 1674 and brought devastating consequences for the Dutch Republic, undoubtedly influencing Maes’s decision to relocate to Amsterdam. The number of signed and dated portraits by Maes plummeted in these years as a result of the war, making this work especially rare.[12] It is possible that this portrait was among the final works produced by Maes before the French invasion.

Little is known about the early history of our painting. It was first published when in the collection of John Wanamaker, the Gilded Age magnate and pioneer of the American department store. John Wanamaker & Co. (or Wanamaker’s, as it was more commonly known) encompassed an entire block in downtown Philadelphia across from City Hall and included a twelve-story atrium known as the Grand Court. Wanamaker amassed a considerable fortune from this enterprise and started voraciously acquiring paintings in Europe in the 1880s. The 1939 sale catalogue of the Wanamaker collection notes that our portrait had been acquired from Charles Sedelmeyer in Paris, from whom Wanamaker purchased many paintings. However, nothing further is known about the date of its purchase or the earlier provenance of the painting, nor does the painting appear in any of Sedelmeyer’s illustrated catalogues.

By 1904 Wanamaker had assembled a collection of nearly 250 Old Master paintings, which he installed in his impressive home, Lindenhurst, outside Philadelphia. Lindenhurst included a large gallery, which Wanamaker had purpose-built to display his collection of Dutch, Flemish, and French paintings. The illustrated catalogue of the collection includes several interior views of the gallery, showing our Maes portrait hanging high on the wall above the doorway (Figs. 4–5). In the winter of 1907, a fire broke out at Lindenhurst, destroying the home and much of its contents. Fortunately, the gallery was built as an adjacent wing of the home, which allowed most of the works to be saved before the fire reached there.[13] That included the Maes portrait, as the painting did not appear on a 1908 list of fire-damaged paintings treated by the conservator Pasquale Farina.[14]

The display of paintings—both works for sale and from John Wanamaker’s personal collection—was an integral aspect of Wanamaker’s department store. In addition to exhibiting paintings throughout different areas of the store, Wanamaker constructed a dedicated art gallery in the flag ship Philadelphia building in 1881. Wanamaker was the first department store owner to display art in this way, and he thought of Wanamaker’s as rivalling America’s newly formed public museums.[15] The Golden Book of Wanamaker Stores proudly boasted that the exhibitions “have helped to convert the Wanamaker Stores into vast public museums . . . reaching a larger number [of visitors] than many of the museums owned and controlled by the city or the state. The record of last year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City, for example, showed a visitors’ list of upwards of a million. The attendance at Wanamaker’s reaches an annual total of many millions of visitors!”[16] The Wanamaker Art Galleries were situated just outside John Wanamaker’s office on the eighth floor of the department store.[17] Wanamaker frequently moved paintings between his residences and the department store throughout his life. Following his death in 1922, most if not all of his personal collection of Old Masters was put on display in Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia. Nicolaes Maes’s Portrait of a Young Lady is recorded in two inventories of the Wanamaker Art Galleries. The 1927 inventory of the collection lists the painting in the Dutch Gallery on the eighth floor.[18] The Wanamaker Art Galleries seems to have been relocated to a new space on the seventh floor in the following year, and the Maes is again listed among the Dutch pictures in 1928.[19] A blueprint of the art galleries from this period shows that the Old Master paintings from John Wanamaker’s collection were displayed together in the room shown in the upper left of the plan.[20]

While our portrait was admired by countless visitors to Wanamaker’s in the first decades of the twentieth century, it has remained unseen and overlooked by scholars of the Dutch Golden Age for the past eighty years.[21] León Krempel included it in his catalogue raisonné of Maes’s paintings, published in 2000, relying on the photograph from the 1939 Wanamaker catalogue. Dr. Krempel has recently confirmed Maes’s authorship of the present painting on the basis of new photography (written communication, 17 July 2019).

——

[1] León Krempel, Studien zu den datierten Gemälden des Nicolaes Maes (1634–1693), Petersberg, 2000, p. 96.

[2] Krempel, Studien zu den datierten Gemälden des Nicolaes Maes, pp. 92, 94–96.

[3] Krempel, Studien zu den datierten Gemälden des Nicolaes Maes, pp. 92, 94.

[4] Alison McNeil Kettering, The Dutch Arcadia: Pastoral Art and its Audience in the Golden Age, New Jersey, 1983, pp. 10–11, 18, 65, 70–71.

[5] Arnold Houbraken, De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlandtsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen, Amsterdam, 1976, vol. 2, p. 275. “Gelyk hy tot dien einde eens een speelreis naar Antwerpen gedaan heeft, om de overheerlyke penceelkonst van Rubbens, van Dyk, en andere hoogvliegers te zien, als ook de Konstenaars te bezoeken.”

[6] William W. Robinson, “Nicolaes Maes: Some Observations on His Early Portraits,” in Rembrandt and His Pupils, ed. by Görel Cavalli-Björkman, Stockholm, 1993, pp. 112–114.

[7] Houbraken, De Groote Schouburgh, vol. 2, p. 274. “Ik niet weet dat ’er een Schilder voor of na hem is geweest, die gelukkiger is geweest in ’t wel treffen der gelykenissen van der menschen weezens.”

[8] For discussions of signatures of this type, see: Krempel, Studien zu den datierten Gemälden des Nicolaes Maes, p. 27. The Schnörkeltypus signature is characterized by the flourishes on the N and the M. Krempel notes that the fully fledged, baroque type of flourish, as it appears in this work, is concentrated to the years 1670–1672.

[9] Krempel, Studien zu den datierten Gemälden des Nicolaes Maes, p. 85.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Houbraken, De Groote Schouburgh, vol. 2, p. 275, “Hy zig met zyn huisgezin tot Amsterdam neergeslagen hebbende kreeg de handen zoo vol werk dat het voor een gunst gerekent wierd, als den eenen voor den anderen, gelegentheid wierd ingeschikt van te konnen voor hun pourtret zitten, en dit bleef zoo duuren tot het einde van zyn leven, waarom ‘er ook een groot getal pourtretten onafgedaan zyn na gebleven.” Translation from William W. Robinson, “Nicolaes Maes” in The Grove Dictionary of Art, From Rembrandt to Vermeer, 17th-Century Dutch Artists, New York, 2000, pp. 202–203.

[12] Krempel, Studien zu den datierten Gemälden des Nicolaes Maes, pp. 23, 85, 89.

[13] Nicole C. Kirk, Wanamaker’s Temple, New York, 2018, pp. 124–125.

[14] John Wanamaker Records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. “Mr. Wanamaker’s Private Collection of Paintings…Listed by Pasquale Farina, 1908.” Farina was also the conservator to the collector of early Italian paintings, John G. Johnson, ca. 1909–1916. For more information on Farina, see: http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ pasquale-farina_(Dizionario-Biografico)/.

[15] Kirk, Wanamaker’s Temple, pp. 137–142.

[16] Golden Book of Wanamaker Stores, Philadelphia, 1911, p. 248.

[17] For a discussion of the Wanamaker Art Galleries and methods of display at Wanamaker’s, see: Kirk, Wanamaker’s Temple, pp. 143–146.

[18] John Wanamaker Records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. “Inventory of the Old Master Canvases as Exhibited on the Eight Floor, Market Street front in a series of six rooms, known as the Wanamaker Galleries,” 22 March 1927, p. 4, no. 12, Portrait of a Lady, by Nicolaes Maes, in the Dutch Gallery.

[19] John Wanamaker Records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. “List of Old Masters…in the New Wanamaker Art Galleries, now in position on the Seventh Floor, Chestnut Street Building, Juniper Street Side,” 13 September 1928, p. 10, Portrait of a Lady, by Nicolaes Maes.

[20] Plan for the Art Galleries, from an Album of Interior Design Drawings for the Wanamaker Store, Philadelphia, by George W. Smith & Co., ca. 1929, Wanamaker Collection, Athenaeum of Philadelphia. http://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/r.cfm?r=643127.

[21] The painting does not appear in Hofstede de Groot’s catalogue raisonné of Dutch painters or in his fiches at the RKD in The Hague. It was also not discussed in Wilhelm R. Valentiner’s 1924 monograph on Nicolaes Maes.