Nicolaes Maes

A Portrait of a Lady

Amsterdam, the mid-1670s

Oil on canvas

113.6 x 89.5 cm

The identity of this fashionably-dressed woman posed in a landscape is not known.

The costume and her hairstyle suggest a date from the mid-1670s, after Maes had moved to Amsterdam and when he took up painting society portraits.  Maes had hitherto specialised in genre scenes painted in the style of Rembrandt whose pupil he was in the 1640s.  The artist’s new elegant style was derived from the works of Van Dyck which Maes saw on a trip to Antwerp in the late 1660s.

Purchased 1944 (No.44.12)