A Family Group

By 1680 Maes had long abandoned the intimate Rembrandtesque biblical scenes of his early career in favour of fashionable portraiture in the style influenced by Anthony van Dyck and French court painting. A Family Group at the Harvard Art Museums exemplifies his late manner: elegant figures in a parkland or architectural setting, soft lighting, refined costumes, and a compositional ambition that moves well beyond the single-sitter format. The shift reflected a broader change in Dutch taste during the 1660s–1680s, as the Republic's elite increasingly modelled their culture on French aristocratic ideals in the wake of Louis XIV's growing dominance of European fashion. Family group portraits served to consolidate dynastic identity and the display of wealth through children, costume, and landscape settings. Maes's late facility with these large compositions made him the leading portraitist in Amsterdam during the final decades of his career.

The late style employs a lighter, cooler palette than Maes's early work — grey-blue skies, creamy whites, silver-grey silks replace the warm earth tones of his Rembrandt period. The paint application is broader and more confident, with areas of drapery handled with a few well-placed strokes of loaded paint. Landscape backgrounds are thinly scumbled.