81/100
The Account Keeper
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Artist
Nicolaes Maes
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Year
1656
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Culture
Dutch
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Date of Copy
After 10 portraits that focused on faces, I decided for the next 10 I'd give myself freer range. I had a vague idea of picking paintings with "atmosphere" (I did not have a great definition of what I thought that was).
I really liked the light in this painting. The way it falls across the precise and detailed still lives arranged within the scene is so lovely. It was also fun to find a painting where the original subject already had glasses--I think this is the only one in all 100 entries. (I still had to add a pair to the plaster bust on the top left though.)
I think I was also drawn to the image of a woman quietly doing work with her brain, rather than sitting there looking pretty.
I didn't know about Nicolaes Maes before this entry but now I enjoy his work when I come across it. He studied under Rembrandt, but work like this reminds me of Vermeer. He really liked using that deep orange red you see here--it shows up in more than one of his paintings.
Reference image is from the Saint Louis Art Museum, where this painting is today.