1937.22: The Eavesdropper

Identification and Creation

Object Number

1937.22

People

Nicolaes Maes, Dutch (Dordrecht 1634 - 1693 Amsterdam)

Title

The Eavesdropper

Classification

Drawings

Work Type

drawing

Date

c. 1655

Culture

Dutch

Persistent Link

https://hvrd.art/o/298227

Physical Descriptions

Medium

Brown ink on cream antique laid paper, framing line in brown ink

Dimensions

6.9 x 10.3 cm (2 11/16 x 4 1/16 in.)

Inscriptions and Marks

• collector's mark: upper right, black ink, stamp: L. 717a (Earl of Dalhousie)
• collector's mark: verso, center, graphite: L. 1460d (unidentified, associated with the Earl of Dalhousie)
• watermark: none

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History

Earl of Dalhousie, Ecosse (L. 717a, with his mark). Unidentified collector (L. 1460d, with his mark). Private Collector, gift; to Fogg Art Museum, 1937.

NOTE: Drawing is from an album formerly in the collection of the Earl of Dalhousie.

Published Text

Catalogue

Drawings from the Age of Bruegel, Rubens, and Rembrandt: The Complete Collection Online

Authors

Multiple authors

Publisher

Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2017–)

Entry by William W. Robinson, completed May 13, 2019:

Nicolaes Maes ranks among the most outstanding Dutch painters of domestic scenes and portraits. A native of Dordrecht, he studied with Rembrandt in Amsterdam in the late 1640s and early 1650s, returning to his hometown by the end of 1653. Until about 1660, he specialized in pictures of household life, portraits, and biblical subjects. After 1660, Maes devoted himself exclusively to portraiture. His varied oeuvre of drawings—more than one hundred survive—all date from this period in Dordrecht. In 1673, he moved to Amsterdam, where he attracted a larger and wealthier clientele than the patrons he served in Dordrecht.

The Eavesdropper belonged to an album that was made up and bound in the 18th century, when it was probably acquired by George Ramsay, 8th Earl of Dalhousie (1739–1787).¹ In addition to some 30 sketches by Maes, this volume contained dozens of drawings by other Rembrandt pupils and followers. It remained in the Dalhousie family until 1922, when it was sold to the London dealer P. & D. Colnaghi, and shortly thereafter the contents were dispersed by the Paul Cassirer gallery, in Berlin.²

First published and illustrated in Wilhelm Valentiner’s 1924 monograph on Maes, the drawing was recognized in 1984 by Werner Sumowski as a compositional sketch for the artist’s painting An Eavesdropper with a Woman Scolding, in the Harold Samuel Collection, Guildhall Art Gallery, Mansion House, in London (Fig. 1).³ The painting depicts a young servant woman who regards the viewer with her finger to her lips, engaging our silence and complicity in her eavesdropping. She listens to her mistress who, in an adjacent room, berates her husband, whom we cannot see. The picture is signed and dated 1655.⁴ It is one of six paintings by Maes, all of which date between 1655 and 1657, that depict women—and, in one case, a man—who eavesdrop on conversations or erotic encounters that take place in other parts of the house.⁵ Exceptionally, the work in the Samuel Collection includes a trompe-l’oeil curtain and frame. The curtain has been partially drawn aside to reveal the morally compromising domestic quarrel.

The small, summary sketch lays out the main elements of the composition—the figure of the servant, the barrel and assorted household objects to her left, and the illusionistic curtain that occupies much of the right half of the panel—although it does not show the scolding housewife who plays an essential part in the narrative and meaning of the picture. In other instances, too, Maes relied on only a quick sketch to establish the overall design of a painting, leaving the details to be worked out on the canvas or panel or in figure studies on paper.⁶ A small, three-quarter length figure of a woman with her index finger raised to her lips likely served as a detail study for the servant in the Samuel Collection painting (Fig. 2). Like the Harvard sketch, this drawing also came from the Dalhousie album and was executed in brown ink applied with a brush.⁷

¹ Julia Lloyd Williams, Dutch Art and Scotland: A Reflection of Taste (Edinburgh: National Gallery of Scotland, 1992), p. 163.

² “Earl of Dalhousie,” in Frits Lugt, Les Marques de Collections de Dessins & d’estampes, online edition, Fondation Custodia, 2010, no. 717a, http://www.marquesdecollections.fr/detail.cfm/marque/6509/total/1 (accessed May 8, 2019); and William W. Robinson, “The Early Works of Nicolaes Maes, 1653–1661,” 3 vols., Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 318–27.

³ Wilhelm R. Valentiner, Nicolaes Maes (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1924), pp. 47–50, Fig. 48; Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols. (New York: Abaris Books, 1979–92), vol. 8, no. 1769, pp. 3984–85.

⁴ On the painting in the Harold Samuel Collection, see Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler in vier Bänden, 4 vols. (Landau, Germany: Edition PVA, 1983), vol. 3, no. 1353, repr. p. 2079, p. 2018; and Peter C. Sutton, Dutch and Flemish Seventeenth-Century Paintings. The Harold Samuel Collection (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), no. 37, repr., p. 114–17; and León Krempel, Studien zu den datierten Gemälden des Nicolaes Maes (1634–1693) (Petersberg, M. Imhof, 2000), no. A5, p. 280.

⁵ William W. Robinson, “The Eavesdroppers and Related Paintings by Nicolaes Maes,” in Holländische Genremalerei im 17. Jahrhundert: Symposium Berlin 1984, Jahrbuch Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Sonderband 4, ed. Henning Bock and Thomas W. Gaehtgens (Berlin: G. Mann, 1987), pp. 283–313.

⁶ Peter Schatborn, Ger Luijten, and Arthur Wheelock, Jr., Drawings for Paintings in the Age of Rembrandt (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art; Paris: Fondation Custodia, 2016), pp. 248–50.

⁷ Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, vol. 8, no. 1892x, pp. 4230–31; Sutton, Dutch and Flemish Seventeenth-Century Paintings, under no. 37, repr. Fig. 5, pp. 115–16.

Figures

Fig. 1 Nicolaes Maes, An Eavesdropper with a Woman Scolding

Fig. 2 Nicolaes Maes, Eavesdropper

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Anonymous Gift

Accession Year

1937

Object Number

1937.22

Division

European and American Art

Contact

am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu

Permissions

The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.

Publication History

• William R. Valentiner, Nicolaes Maes, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt (Stuttgart, Germany, 1924), pp. 47-50, repr. fig. 48
• Agnes Mongan and Paul J. Sachs, Drawings in the Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, 1940), vol. 1, cat. no. 514, p. 271; vol. 3, repr. fig. 259
• An Exhibition of Dutch and Flemish Drawings and Watercolors, checklist, Unpublished (1954), cat. no. 84, p. 20
• Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, ed. Walter Strauss, Abaris Books (New York, NY, 1979), vol. 8 (1984), pp. 3984-85, no. 1769, p. 4006, under no. 1780, p. 4190, under no. 1873x, p. 4230, under 1892x, p. 4376, under no. 1960x, p. 4384, under no. 1964x, p. 4386, under no. 1965x, p. 4392, under no. 1966bx
• The Draughtsman at Work. Drawing in the Golden Century of Dutch Art, checklist (unpublished, 1980), no. 40
• Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler in vier Banden (Landau, 1983), vol. 3, p. 2018, under no. 1353
• Peter C. Sutton, Dutch & Flemish Seventeenth-century Paintings: The Harold Samuel Collection, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, U.K., 1992), p. 116, under no. 37
• Andreas Hahn, "--dat zy de aanschouwers schynen te willen aanspreken" : Untersuchungen zur Rolle des Betrachters in der Niederlandischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Tuduv-Verlagsgesellschaft (München, 1996), p. 183
• William W. Robinson, "The Early Works of Nicolaes Maes, 1653 to 1661" (1996), Harvard University, vol. 1, pp. 112-13, p. 243, no. A13a, vol. 2, fig. A-13a
• León Krempel, Studien zu den datierten Gemälden des Nicolaes Maes, Michael Imhof-Verlag (Petersberg, 2000), under cat. no. A5, p. 280

Exhibition History

• An Exhibition of Dutch and Flemish Drawings and Watercolors, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 04/01/1954 - 04/30/1954
• The Draughtsman at Work. Drawing in the Golden Century of Dutch Art, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 11/21/1980 - 01/04/1981

Subjects and Contexts

• Dutch, Flemish, & Netherlandish Drawings

Verification Level