Nicolaes Maes

Lijst van de Portretten, Wapenen en Schilderijen behorende aan Mejuffrouw Suzanna Theodora de Wildt, MS, Leiden City Archives (acc. no. NL-Ldno.AL-0516), Leiden 1838;

B. Gaehtgens, Adriaen van der Werff, Munich 1987, p. 410, reproduced;

L. Krempel, Studien zu den datierten Gemälden des Nicolaes Maes (1634–1693), Petersberg 2000, p. 320, no. A 189, reproduced fig. 276;

A. van de Suchtelen, Nicolaes Maes: Rembrandts veelzijdige leerling, exh. cat., Zwolle 2019, pp. 164–73, and 215, no. 33, reproduced p. 168;

London Visitors, review of the Nicolaes Maes exhibition, where reproduced with the other three Van Alphen portraits: https://londonvisitors.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/img_4814.jpg

The Nicolaes Maes exhibition at the Mauritshuis in The Hague and the National Gallery in London brought together for the first time since their separation in 1930 Nicolaes Maes’ portraits of four members of the Van Alphen family of Leiden: the brothers Simon van Alphen (1650–1730) and Dirck van Alphen (1652–1701), their sister Maria van Alphen (1656–1723), and their niece, Beatrix van Alphen (1672–1728).¹

^The present portrait of Beatrix is the only one to be dated, but they are wholly consistent in style and presentation and it is assumed that they were all painted at the same time. All of them are portrayed in lavish faux-antique costumes that were fashionable at the time. The siblings are painted three-quarter-length, but five-year-old Beatrix is portrayed full-length, a nosegay of flowers in her left hand and sprays of flowers lifted up in her apron by her right – one imagines gathered from the garden behind her, as if leaving a terrace with one foot on a step, her papillon spaniel awaiting her. Evidently from a wealthy family, she wears pearls in her ears and around her neck.

Clearly the Van Alphens were a long-lived family by the standards of their day. Beatrix was daughter of Daniel van Alphen (1638–1711), half-brother of Simon and Dirck, and Gertruida Trigland. She married Johan van Assendelft, with whom she had three children, the first, a son, born in 1691, followed by daughters in 1692 and 1696. She remained in Leiden all her life.

Maes painted the Van Alphen portraits about four years after he moved to Amsterdam from his native Dordrecht. By then he was at the peak of his success as a portraitist, with clientele from other major cities in The Netherlands, including, as here, from Leiden. He had long shed his early Rembrandtesque phase, but retained, as we see in this portrait, his love of strong russet colouring.

In her catalogue entry for the four portraits in the Nicolaes Maes exhibition, curator Ariane van Suchtelen describes them as amongst the best portraits in Maes’ œuvre, noting their outstanding condition. All four are still in their original frames, made of warm brown walnut and decorated with gilt mounts.²

¹ The portraits of Dirck and Maria have remained together. That of Simon van Alphen is in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; and those of Dirck and Maria van Alphen belong to Galerie Neuse, Bremen.

² Eight portraits by Maes' townsman Samuel van Hoogstraeten dating from 1671 portraying Maarten Paauw, burgomaster of Delft in that year, and his wife and six children, all have frames decorated with very similar ornaments, probably made by the same metalworker.