Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting online talk from the National Gallery on their current exhibition of the Dutch Golden Age painter Nicolaes Maes. I had enjoyed this show and was interested to hear more about it from it’s curator Bart Cornelius. Using pictures from the show he took us through Maes career from his time as a pupil of Rembrandt, to his return to his home town of Dordrecht where he became a genre painter though to his later career as a portraitist in Amsterdam. He explained how and why Maes’s style had changed throughout his career, giving an idea of how artists had to adapt to new markets if they wished to remain successful. It made me want to go back and look at the show again now that it has reopened.

Interesting exhibition at the National Gallery looking at the career of the 17th century Dutch artist Nicolaes Maes. Maes trained in Rembrandt’s studio and the show showed how this reflected in his early work but how he adapted his style throughout his career to reflect the fashion of the city he was working in. The first room looked at this Rembrandt influence including a large painting of Christ Blessing the Children and copies he made of picture of the Holy family by his master. My favourite section was the central one which looked at his time in Dordrecht when he painted genre pictures, mainly of women in interiors, which showed an innovative approach to portraying space and a remarkable clarity. I loved this picture of a girl threading a needle with its close observation of this action. In 1673 he returned to Amsterdam and started painting what to me were slightly overblown portraits often with sitters in fantasised clothes. I was fascinated though to see some of ...