Nicolaes Maes Dordrecht 1634 - 1693 Amsterdam

The Hermitage, St. Petersburg (according to the exhibition catalogue of 1934);
Dr. van Hengel, The Netherlands;
Possibly with Dowdeswell, London (with a fifth person to the left);
With D. Katz, Dieren, The Netherlands, by 1934;
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 9 December 1959, lot 121, to G.F. Thomson;
Private Noble collection, Belgium;
From which sold, London, Sotheby's, 17 December 1998, lot 157, where acquired by the present owner.

The Hague, Koninklijke Kunstzaal Kleykamp, Tentoonstelling van schilderijen door Oud-Hollandse en Vlaamsche Meesters uit de collectie Katz te Dieren, 1934, Supplement, p. 4, no. 11.

Probably C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné…, vol. VI, London 1916, p. 596, no. 553 (with measurements of 34 ½ by 42 in. and with a fifth person on the left);
W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, Landau/Pfalz 1983, vol. III, p. 2036, under no. 1443.

This is a mature portrait group by Maes, which Professor Dr Werner Sumowski compares to a Portrait of four children dated 1674 in the Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht (inv. no. DM 972/467; see Literature, p. 2036, no. 1443, reproduced). It corresponds to a work by Maes mentioned by Hofstede de Groot (see Literature below) but the differing measurements may be accounted for by the likely reduction of the canvas by about 34 cm. at the left side sometime between 1910 and 1959, thus removing a boy (the eldest brother according to Hofstede de Groot) dressed as a sportsman in yellow and red, in the process of shooting an arrow.

The figure of the little boy representing Ganymede shows close affinities with Maes’ painting of Gerbrand De Vicq (1674-1712), as Ganymede, sold London, Christie’s, 10 July 1992, lot 148, in which the poses of both the child and the eagle correspond closely to those in the present picture. Sumowski (see Literature, p. 2033, under no. 1423) suggests that the portrayal of a child as Ganymede was intended to indicate that he had died during infancy, as was the case for the other small child in this picture, shown with angels’ wings in the upper right corner. Nicolaes Maes painted several portraits of children as Ganymede, Apollo and Diana, both single figure and in family groups (ibid., cat. nos. 1423-4, 1442-3, 1446, reproduced pp. 2149-50, 2168-9 and 2172). These can all be dated to the 1670s and early 1680s, although stylistically the early 1670s seems a more plausible dating for the present work.