Wallace Collection Online - The Listening Housewife (The Eavesdropper)

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Nicolas Maes (1634 - 1693) The Listening Housewife (The Eavesdropper) Netherlands: Date: 1656

Object Type: Painting

Medium: Oil on canvas

Image size: 84.7 x 70.6 cm
Frame size: 114 x 100.2 cm

Inv: P224

Location: East Galleries I

One of Maes’ most original genre motifs was the interior with an eavesdropper, here an elegant housewife, who smiles engagingly, inviting the viewer to witness the misbehaviour of the servants downstairs. Maes employed a device known in Dutch as ‘doorkijkje’, literally looking through a door, which opens the vista from one room to another offering a glimpse of action beyond the main scene. This device had been used in northern art as early as the fifteenth century. The painting’s warm palette and strong light and shade effects relate it to Rembrandt, but Maes’ originality lies in the emphasis on the illusion of interior space. The light here not only serves the depiction of space and depth, but also underlines the judgmental attitude, by contrasting the calm and probity of the dining room with the moral as well as physical descent towards the heated kitchen.

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