Nicolaes Maes, also known as Niclaes Maas (Dordrecht 1632-1693 Amsterdam), was a Dutch painter of genre scenes and portraits. Maes was the son of Gerrit Maes, a prosperous merchant, and Ida Herman Claesdr. About 1648 he went to Amsterdam and entered Rembrandt's studio. Before his return to Dordrecht in 1653 Maes painted a few Rembrandtesque genre pictures, with life-size figures and in a deep glowing scheme of color, like the Reverie at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Card Players at the National Gallery, and the Children with a Goat Carriage. So closely did his early style resemble that of Rembrandt, that the last-named picture, and other canvases in the Leipzig and Budapest galleries and in the collection of Lord Radnor, were or are still ascribed to Rembrandt. In his best period, from 1655 to 1665, Maes devoted himself to domestic genre on a smaller scale, retaining to a great extent the magic of color he had learnt from Rembrandt. Only on rare occasions did he treat scriptural subjects, as in Hagar's Departure, which has been ascribed to Rembrandt. His favorite subjects were women spinning, or reading the Bible, or preparing a meal. While he continued to reside in Dordrecht until 1673, when he settled in Amsterdam, he visited or even lived in Antwerp between 1665 and 1667. His Antwerp period coincides with a complete change in style and subject. He devoted himself almost exclusively to portraiture, and abandoned the intimacy and glowing color harmonies of his earlier work for a careless elegance which suggests the influence of Van Dyck. So great indeed was the change, that it gave rise to the theory of the existence of another Maes, of Brussels.

Maes apprenticed with Rembrandt from about 1648 to 1654, where he focused first on genre paintings and then on portraits. This drawing was probably done while he was in Rembrandt's studio or shortly after leaving it to return to Dordrecht and set himself up as a master. As Marian Bisanz-Prakken says in Rembrandt and His Time: Masterworks from the Albertina, Vienna (NY: Hudson Hills Press, 2005), "In Maes's studies of biblical and mythological scenes, which are mostly executed in pen, sometimes in combination with the brush, Rembrandt's influence is clearly evident. . . . In these representations, the typological rather than the portrait aspect comes predominantly to the fore" (p. 108). Robinson's entry in The Art Dictionary (20: 78-81) argues that "Though indebted to Rembrandt's example, the early religious works exhibit a precocious originality in the interpretation of the sacred text and iconographic tradition" (78). Williams further suggests that "for a brief period in the mid-1650s—the most likely date for our drawing—Maes ranked among the most innovative Dutch genre painters, owing to his talent for pictorial invention and for devising expressive poses, gestures, and physiognomies."

For Rembrandt and his friends, students, and followers, there often seems to be a direct connection between drawing and printmaking. Artists like Ferdinand Bol, Govaert Flinck, Jan Lievens, Nicolaes Maes, Jan Joris van Vliet, and Pieter de With, are fluent draftsmen and often excellent printmakers as well. While the Counter Reformation held sway in the south, in the north, in Holland and Zeeland, Jesus, the Apostles, and their predecessors in the Old Testament, walk the same ground that burghers, beggars, farmers, and peasants tred, work the same fields, trying to coexist with nature and yet to wrest it to their needs. Biblical stories, landscapes, and portraits can be a way to connect the present to the past and the future.

Very select bibliography: Marian Bisanz-Prakken, Rembrandt and His Time: Masterworks from the Albertina (Milwaukee: Milwaukee Art Museum, 2005); Hans-Martin Rotermund, Rembrandt's Drawings and Etchings for the Bible, trans. Sherry M. Weber (Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1969); Seymour Slive, Drawings of Rembrandt, 2 vols. (NY: Dover. 1965); Jeroen Giltaij, The Drawings by Rembrandt and his school in the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen (Rotterdam: Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, 1988); Walter Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols. (NY: Abaris Books, 1979-1992)—see volume 8 for Niclaes Maes (including the drawing below).