Nicolas Maes: Dutch Master of the Golden Age

While many museums remain shuttered due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Apollo’s usual weekly pick of exhibitions will include shows at institutions that are now reopening as well as digital projects providing virtual access to art and culture.

The National Gallery in London is reopening after nearly four months on 8 July, with both of its temporary displays extended. ‘Titian: Love, Desire, Death’ (featured in Apollo’s Art Diary in March) will run until 17 January 2021, while this exhibition of paintings by the Dutch artist Nicolas Maes is now on view until 20 September. A gifted pupil of Rembrandt, Maes produced elegant portraits of the Dutch upper crust – but his most inventive works are his genre scenes, in which moments of domestic life are imbued with intrigue, and the protagonists often stare directly at the viewer as if implicating them in the drama. The exhibition is a collaboration with the Mauritshuis; you can read Florence Hallet’s review of its first outing in The Hague here, and find out more from the National Gallery’s website.

Preview the exhibition below | View Apollo’s Art Diary here

Portrait of Jacob Trip (c. 1576–1661) (1665), Nicolas Maes. Photo: Margareta Svensson; © Mauritshuis, The Hague

Girl at a Window (1653–55), Nicolas Maes. Photo: © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

A Sleeping Man Having his Pockets Picked (c. 1656), Nicolas Maes. Photo: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The Eavesdropper (c. 1656), Nicolaes Maes. The Wellington Collection, Apsley House (English Heritage), London