Hilly Landscape with Hunters on Horseback

Dirk Maas (Haarlem 1656 - Haarlem 1717)

He was born on 12 September 1656 in Haarlem and was baptized two days later.³ He was the oldest son of the Hoorn merchant Carel Dircksz Maas (?-1708) and of his second wife, Geertruyda van Vaerle (?-1674), both well-to-do members of the Protestant Church.⁴ His uncle Johannes Dircksz Maas (1629-1699) also worked as a painter in Haarlem from 1659 until his death. Another painter in Dirk’s family was his cousin Jan Pietersz Maas (1655-1690), also active in Haarlem.

According to Houbraken, Dirk Maas was taught by Hendrick Mommers (1619/20-1693) and Nicolaes Berchem (1621/22-1683).⁵ On 8 November 1678, Maas became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St Luke, three years after the date of his earliest known work, Cavalry Encounter (1675), now in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (inv. no. ??-2427). He served as warden of the Haarlem guild at some point, though the exact date is unknown owing to the loss of records. On 10 October 1681, while still living in his parents’ house on the Grote Markt, he joined the city’s Dutch Reformed Church.⁶

In 1690, Maas travelled to England as part of the entourage of Stadholder-King William III (1650-1702) and was an eye witness at the Battle of the Boyne (1 July 1690), when William’s troops defeated those of Catholic King James II (1633-1701). Maas commemorated the victory with a drawn panoramic view of the battle, preserved in the British Royal Collection at Windsor Castle (RCIN 916607).⁷ This drawing he used as the basis for a large etching (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-82.799)⁸ and at least two paintings, one commissioned by Hans William Bentinck (1649-1907), 1st Earl of Portland, still in this family’s collection at Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire (inv. no. 523),⁹ the other in the collection of the National Trust at Petworth House, West Sussex (inv. no. 117).¹⁰

Dirk was back in Haarlem in 1692. On 6 July 1694, he married his full cousin, his mother’s niece Aletta van Vaerle (Varelen) (?-?) in the Walloon Church. Of their seven children, five died prematurely. Dirk must have had considerable financial means, for he bought houses and plots in the years following his marriage.

After Maas’s return to Holland, William III remained his most prominent patron, as he had been before the trip to England. In 1693, Maas painted a Boar Hunt for the Stadholder-King’s palace of Het Loo, Apeldoorn (inv. no. 271),¹¹ and probably also the unsigned, undated Deer Hunt in that collection (inv. no. 242). The same year, he collaborated with Johannes Glauber (1646-c. 1726) and Albert Meyering (1645-1714) in the decoration of the palace of Soestdijk. Maas’s activities for the court at The Hague probably account for his joining the local painters’ guild, Confrerie Pictura, in 1697, even though he remained a resident of Haarlem.

Maas occasionally appraised paintings, and he is recorded as having had business transactions with the painters Cornelis Dusart (1660-1704) and Jan van der Meer II (1656-1705). In 1709 he carried out restoration work on a militia painting by Dirk Hals (1591-1656), and he added staffage to the paintings by Johannes Glauber, Gerrit Berckheyde (1638-1698) and Adriaen Oudendijck (1677-1704).

Like fellow Mommers pupil Jan van Huchtenburg (1647-1733), with whom he was friends, Dirk Maas specialized in equestrian subjects in the manner of Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668), producing riding schools, hunting and battle scenes, in paintings, drawings and etchings. There are also few still-lifes signed by the artist.

At the age of sixty-one, Dirk died on 25 December 1717 in Haarlem and was buried on 30 December in the Grote or Sint Bavo Kerk.¹² His estate was sold on 25 April 1718 by Isaac Vincentsz van der Vinne (1665-1740). His only known pupil was Willem Hugaerts (1683-1727).¹³

Annemarie Stefes, 2019

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, III (1721), p. 362; A. van der Willigen, Geschiedkundige aantekeningen over Haarlemsche schilders, Haarlem 1866, p. 154; J.P. van der Kellen, Le Peintre graveur hollandais et flamand [des XVIe et XVIIe siècles] ou catalogue raisonné des estampes gravées par les peintres de l’école hollandaise et flamande: Ouvrage faisant suite au peintre-graveur de Bartsch, Utrecht 1866, p. 163; A. van der Willigen, Les Artistes de Harlem: Notices historiques avec un précis sur la Gilde de St. Luc, Haarlem/The Hague 1870, p. 205; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, II (1910), pp. 87-88; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXIII (1929), pp. 544-45 (entry by M.D. Henkel); F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, XI (1954), pp. 149-52; H. Miedema, De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lukasgilde te Haarlem, 1497-1789, 2 vols., Alphen aan den Rijn 1980, I, p. 334, II, pp. 680, 933, 941, 1034, 1067; A. Stefes, Nicolaes Pietersz. Berchem: Die Zeichnungen, 3 vols., Bern 1997 (PhD diss., Universität Bern), I, pp. 9, 91-95; III, pp. 451-57; E. Buijsen (ed.), Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw. Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag, 1600-1700, Zwolle 1998, p. 326; A. van der Willigen and F.G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-life Painters Working in Oils, 1525-1725, Leiden 2003, p. 136; P. Biesboer and N. Köhler (eds.), Painting in Haarlem, 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 226-28 (entry by I. van Thiel-Stroman); P. Groenendijk, Beknopt biografisch lexicon van Zuid- en Noord-Nederlandse schilders, graveurs, glasschilders, tapijtwevers et cetera van ca. 1350 tot ca. 1720, Utrecht 2008, p. 508; A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, LXXXVI (2015), p. 85 (entry by P. Biesboer)