Nicolaes Maes was born in Dordrecht and was the son of Gerrit Maes, a prosperous merchant. In c.1648 he went to Amsterdam and became a pupil of Rembrandt, learning from his masters use of deep intensity of colour in his work. In this period he painted mostly genre scenes such as women lacemaking or reading the Bible, before returning to Dordrecht in 1653. In c.1660 Maes began specialising in portraits, moving away from the Rembrandt style of colouring more towards the brighter colours used by artists such as Van Dyke.

Arnold Houbraken's 1721 biography described this transformation as : (Maes) 'learned the art of painting from Rembrandt but lost that way of painting early, particularly when he took up portraiture and discovered that young ladies preferred white to brown'. Maes was probably happy to respond to the wishes of his patrons whilst at the same time creating, with his light, elegant and French influenced style, a trend that a fashion conscious public were eager to pursue. 

Examples of his work can be seen in the National Gallery, London, Buckingham Palace and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.