Nicolaes Maes genre genre painting
Genre painting
During this early period Maes showed himself to be among the most inventive genre painters in the Dutch Republic. He introduced new themes and invented unprecedented expressive poses, gestures and facial expressions.  Maes painted various genre scenes set on the domestic doorsteps (for example A young boy receiving alms from an elderly man, 1656, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts) and others praising the virtues of good parenting.  These works were influential on other Dutch painters such as Jan Steen.  Maes applied Rembrandt's stylistic characteristics such as the brushwork and chiaroscuro to domestic scenes that were the favourite subject matter of Dutch genre artists of his time.His paintings of domestic interiors showing women engaged in household tasks are endowed with a solemn dignity through the play of light and shadow and the limited color palette derived from Rembrandt.  Between 1654 and 1658, he created a large number of pictures of spinners, lace makers and mothers with children that express the contemporary moralistic view of the value of family life and quiet diligence.  An example is The virtuous woman (c.1655, the Wallace Collection) which depicts a housewife sewing a shirt in a very tidy interior. An open Bible at her side implies that she is also clean and pious in spirit. A little boy at the window may indicate that the composition is a depiction of Proverbs 31, 10-19 about working hard and stretching the hand to the poor and the needy. Maes has thus transformed a simple domestic scene into an evocation of the exercise of dignity and moral uprightness in a true biblical sense.Maes created some works showing everyday events occurring on the doorstep of a private house such as milkmaids ringing the doorbell or receiving payment or boys asking for alms. Maes was able to bestow on these mundane transactions a solemn dignity.  Another theme treated by Maes in the mid-1650s are elderly female figures shown in half or three-quarter length such as an elderly woman saying grace before a simple meal, praying amid vanitas symbols or dozing over a Bible.
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