Jan Baptiste Lodewijk Maes (1794-1856)

Jan Baptist Lodewyck Maes (30 September 1794- 7 April 1856) was a Belgian genre painter. Maes studied at the Academy of Ghent. He exhibited for the first time in 1810 at the fair of this city. He won the prizes of all the competitions in which he participated, and in 1820 received a scholarship from the city of Ghent. Thanks to the Belgian Rome Prize he received in 1821, he first visited Paris together with Frans Vervloet (1795–1872) and then went on to Italy. In 1822 he copied works by old masters in the Uffizi Museum. In 1824 he settled in Rome. In 1827 he married the daughter of the engraver Bartolomeo Canini. To Italianize his name, he added the surname of his wife Canini to his surname Maes. The couple had two sons: Jacques-Jean and Lieven-Antoon. The first, Jacques-Jean called Giacomo, born in 1828, became a painter like his father. Maes kept in touch with his hometown and regularly sent works to Belgian salons. He was a corresponding member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences.