Portrait of Joannes Bouwens (1663-1720)

Portrait of Joannes Bouwens from 1685 by Nicolaes Maes is a portrait from the artist's later career, when he had transformed himself from a genre painter in Rembrandt's manner into one of Amsterdam's most fashionable portraitists. Maes was Rembrandt's pupil in the early 1650s. Maes trained with Rembrandt in Amsterdam in the early 1650s before establishing himself as an independent master. His mature portrait style absorbed Flemish elegance — producing fashionable likenesses with looser brushw...

The portrait demonstrates Maes's mature portrait style, which combined Flemish elegance with the Dutch tradition of naturalistic characterization.