The Sound of Silence -- Maes at the Mauritshuis

Shhh -- don't make a sound. You're eavesdropping on the Dutch Golden Age in the mid-17th century, and the man who's giving you a glimpse of this distant world is called Nicolaes Maes. He's a painter, and he's by no means a bad one. In fact, he's one of the most talented pupils of Rembrandt van Rijn. And, in such a crowded art market, one where you need to stand out, he's developed a little specialist genre of his own.

Just take a peep through this doorway.... but quietly now.... the mistress of the house has her finger to her lips, in a painting aptly entitled The Eavesdropper.

Over there, on the right, the servant is being distracted by an amorous man through the open window. And that means she's completely ignoring her charge, the child in the cradle.

We're at Nicolaes Maes -- Rembrandt's Versatile Pupil at the Mauritshuis in The Hague, the first solo retrospective ever to feature the artist, and one that will be travelling to the National Gallery in London in 2020. Maes started out with biblical scenes and ended up as a highly successful portraitist, but it's as a painter of domestic scenes that he's perhaps best known, and that motif of the eavesdropper was one he returned to again and again. There are two more in this show, giving us half the total of six he painted from 1655 to 1657.

Silence figures an awful lot in Maes's interiors. In the Rembrandt-Velázquez exhibition on at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam at the moment comparing Dutch and Spanish 17th-century painting, there's a Maes of an Old Woman Saying Grace, her eyes closed in prayer as a cat makes an attempt to get at the fish on the table for her meal.

In this show, we get The Account Keeper, an elderly woman who's dropped into a slumber over her ledger in broad daylight, and there's another Old Woman Dozing too, spectacles in hand, her book unread on her lap, her lacework untouched. As their eyes are closed we can quietly pore over the detail without be observed by the painted subject. And what detail: the pronounced veins on the old women's hands, the wrinkles on the wrists supporting their weary heads. All the objects -- the keys, the books and the lace-making bobbins -- are so tangible.

The pots and crockery are no less realistic in The Idle Servant, in which a maid is discovered by her mistress fast asleep with utensils strewn across the kitchen floor and the cat stealing off with a leg of chicken. Somewhat unbelievably, the lady of the house looks amused rather than annoyed. It's a rather twee picture, it has to be said, a quality common to quite a few of Maes's paintings, and an aspect that makes his work a bit less appealing than Pieter de Hooch, for example, currently the subject of a superb exhibition in Delft.

Of course, some of Maes's protagonists are still awake, but hard at work, getting on quietly and assiduously with their tasks, such as this Young Woman Sewing, one of three paintings in this show that's come from the Guildhall Art Gallery in the City of London.

And even when you would expect some noise, as from this boy with a toy drum in Young Mother with her Children, the little percussionist has been silenced. Make some noise when there's a sleeping baby in the room, and you'll get into trouble. The little drummer is already wiping away his tears, one of his drumsticks on the floor. He's either been hit with that bunch of twigs already by his mother, or he's just anticipating the worst. Maes painted this scene not long after getting married. Is this his own family?

The exhibition kicks off with a handful of paintings depicting scenes from the Bible, painted after Maes left Rembrandt's studio in 1653. Maes's dramatic Sacrifice of Isaac depicts the moment an angel intervenes to stop Abraham from slitting the throat of his son to demonstrate his faith to God. It's based on a picture painted by his teacher two decades earlier, but it's very far from being an exact copy. One of Maes's trademarks -- the use of a rich red -- is already evident here.

Much of the show, though, is devoted to the elegant portraits that made Maes his money in late 17th-century Holland. He increasingly dressed his sitters -- from the wealthy business capital of the Dutch Republic, Amsterdam, and from his home town of Dordrecht -- in fantasy clothing and placed them in park-like landscapes.

This Portrait of an Unknown Family sees the father in a Japanese-style housecoat, the children in pseudo-antique draperies, the younger son carrying a dead hare. The fabrics are billowing and shimmering, and the whole exudes an air of wealth and sophistication.

To keep up with demand, Maes developed an efficient working method using standardised formats and poses and a rapid painting style.

Sometimes, the frames are more interesting than the actual paintings, as in the case of Ingena Rotterdam and her betrothed, Jacob Binckes, on the occasion of their engagement. Alas, Jacob, who was a naval officer, died far from home before the two could get married, but Ingena kept her portrait, and his, until she died, despite finding another husband. They're still together, normally in the Met in New York, in their original frames: hers, surmounted by Venus, the goddess of love, and decorated with roses and turtle doves; his with cannon, armour and a globe.

Not every portrait is blingy. There's Margaretha de Geer, wife of Jacob Trip, the fabulously wealthy heads of a merchant family from Dordrecht, who is the essence of Dutch Protestant sobriety. In her mid-80s in 1669, Margaretha wears no jewellery and a decades-out-of-fashion starched ruff.

It's a fine portrait, perhaps the best in this show, and helps explain how Maes was able to acquire a fortune that saw him leave 11,000 guilders and several houses in Amsterdam and Dordrecht to his children.

Of course, it's not quite up to Rembrandt's own Portrait of Margaretha de Geer from a few years earlier. But then, who could outdo Rembrandt? Not even one of his best pupils.

Practicalities

Nicolaes Maes -- Rembrandt's Versatile Pupil is on at the Mauritshuis in The Hague until January 19. The gallery is open daily from 1000 to 1800 except on Mondays when it opens at 1300 and on Thursdays when it closes at 2000. Full-price entry to the Mauritshuis, including the exhibition, costs 15.50 euros. The museum is located next to the Binnenhof, the seat of the Dutch government and parliament, and is just 10 minutes' walk from Den Haag Centraal station. The National Gallery show in London will be free of charge and will be on from February 22 to May 31.

And while you're in the Mauritshuis....

Even more than in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, you can experience the essence of the Golden Age in the Mauritshuis with some of the Netherlands' most iconic paintings. On the second floor, start in room 9 with Rembrandt's mould-breaking group portrait, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp. Time to admire some more Rembrandts before you reach room 12, where The Bull by Paulus Potter steals the show, a triumph of naturalism, flies, cowpats and all. Round to room 14 for The Goldfinch, one of the few known works by Carel Fabritius. And then in room 15, look to the left for the astounding View of Delft by Johannes Vermeer, the most famous cityscape of the Golden Age and a painting whose luminosity never fails to take our breath away. And directly opposite, Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring. What a line-up!

Images

Nicolaes Maes, The Eavesdropper, c. 1656, Wellington Collection, Apsley House (English Heritage), London
Nicolaes Maes, Young Woman Sewing, 1655, Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London
Nicolaes Maes, Young Mother with her Children, c. 1656, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Nicolaes Maes, Sacrifice of Isaac, c. 1653-54, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario
Nicolaes Maes, Portrait of an Unknown Family, 1670-75, Thalia Ltd
Nicolaes Maes, Portrait of Ingena Rotterdam (?-1704), 1676, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Nicolaes Maes, Portrait of Margaretha de Geer (1583-1672), 1669, Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht