Nicolaes Maes

Eltham Palace, Kent (according to the following auction catalogue);

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 3 May 1929, lot 67;

Where acquired by "Asscher";

With Howard Young Galleries, New York, by October 1929;

William H. Ball, Muncie, Indiana;

Thence by inheritance to Jeanne C. Ball (1929-2012), Indianapolis;

By whom anonymously sold ("Property of a Private Collector"), New York, Sotheby's, 30 January 1998, lot 13;

Where acquired by the present collector.

Detroit Institute of Arts, The Ninth Loan Exhibition, Dutch Genre and Landscape Paintings of the Seventeenth Century, 16 October - 10 November 1929, no. 43 (lent by Howard Young Galleries, New York);

Indianapolis Museum of Art, long-term loan, 1978-1997 (lent by Jeanne Ball).

Detroit Institute of Arts, The Ninth Loan Exhibition, Dutch Genre and Landscape Paintings of the Seventeenth Century, exhibition catalogue, Detroit 1929, p. xv, cat. no. 43;

A. Goldschmidt, "The Style of Dutch Painting in the Seventeenth Century," in Art Quarterly 2, no. 1 (Winter 1939), p. 14, reproduced fig. 15;

W.W. Robinson, "Nicolaes Maes: Some Observations on His Early Portraits," in Rembrandt and His Pupils: Papers Given at a Symposium in Nationalmuseum Stockholm, Stockholm 1993, p. 111f, 44, 10;

W.E. Franits, "Young women preferred white to brown: Some remarks on Nicolaes Maes and the culural context of late seventeenth-century Dutch portraiture," in Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek (NKJ) 46 (1995), p. 410 note 2;

W. Robinson, The early works of Nicolaes Maes, 1653 to 1661, Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge 1996, pp. 185-188, cat. no. A-71;

W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, vol. 6, Landau/Pfalz 1983, pp. 3733, 3997, cat. no. 2383, reproduced;

L. Krempel, Studien zu den datierten Gemälden des Nicolaes Maes (1634-1693), Petersberg 2000, p. 292, cat. no. A 48, reproduced fig. 101.

Signed and dated 1661, this lively double portrait marks a pivotal moment in the career of Nicolaes Maes, among the most fashionable and prolific portraitists in seventeenth-century Holland. Described by the scholar William Robinson as “the crucial document of the transition from his early to his mature mode of portraiture,” the painting is the earliest dated example of Maes adopting the elegant and courtly manner inspired by Anthony van Dyck. At the same time, the expansive wooded landscape—one of the most elaborate in Maes’s oeuvre—demonstrates the artist’s growing ambition and sophistication during this formative period.

Maes depicts two young sitters dressed in richly-colored costume with all’antica flourishes and accompanied by lively hounds. One carries hunting gear and freshly caught game, while the other strides confidently forward, creating a sense of movement and theatricality characteristic of the artist’s increasingly refined portrait style. Beyond its aristocratic elegance, the imagery of the hunt carried important symbolic meaning in seventeenth-century portraiture, evoking discipline, education, and noble virtue. The lively spaniel, a recurring motif in Maes’s portraits of children, similarly signifies obedience and good training—characteristics that mirror the moral character expected of the sitter. As Robinson observed, the striking novelty of the composition may well have stemmed from the ambitions of the patron, whose desire for a sophisticated and fashionable image encouraged Maes toward the elegant portrait manner that would soon define his career.